Market-driven Mechanisms Research Articles

Nature-Based Solutions: Sustainable Development of Latin America

Latin America is a region with abundant natural resources and diverse cultures, much of which lies between the tropics. Sustainable agriculture, pasture, and forestry practices can have a reduced environmental impact in this region compared to other parts of the world. These integrated systems practices can create a balanced use of chemical inputs, harmonious relations between humans and soil-plants-livestock, and even provide a nature-based solution to climate change by sequestering carbon emissions and are also less likely to lead to soil degradation. These practices are central to a new economic paradigm focused on a sustainable and circular bioeconomy and depend on public policies, incentives, financial mechanisms, and commitments from the business. Carbon farming sustainable agriculture focused on increasing soil health and reducing emissions can gain scale with market-driven mechanisms to surpass the various challenges. This paper presents condensed information from primary and secondary sources, representing established knowledge in the field of soil carbon sequestration in agricultural lands and its role in carbon neutrality. By implementing these strategies, we can support farmers while contributing to the objectives set by the Paris Agreement and the UN's Sustainable Development Goals.

Building customers’ trust in the ridesharing platform with institutional mechanisms

Purpose Drawing upon institution-based trust theory, the purpose of this paper is twofold: firstly, to examine the joint influences of legally binding and market-driven institutional mechanisms in promoting customers’ trust and continuance intention in the ridesharing platform; and secondly, to examine if there exists a trust transfer mechanism between institution-based trust and interpersonal trust. Design/methodology/approach An online survey was conducted in China and data were collected from 307 customers in DiDi, which is one of the largest ridesharing platforms in China. Structural equation modeling statistical method was used to test the theoretical model and research hypotheses. Findings The empirical results suggest that market-driven institutional mechanisms, regarding feedback and surge pricing, have strong influences on customers’ trust in the ridesharing platform. In addition, legally binding institutional mechanisms, regarding payment security and driver certification, are also beneficial to promote customers’ trust. Furthermore, there is a trust transfer between customers’ trust in the platform and trust in the driver. Practical implications This study provides guidelines to the administrators of the ridesharing platform to establish effective institutional mechanisms. In particular, the platform can appropriately adopt and implement the legally binding mechanisms combined with market-driven mechanisms on the platform, in order to enhance customers’ trust and promote their subsequent transaction behaviors. Originality/value This study enriches and extends the extant literature of institution-based trust from e-commerce to the sharing economy by identifying four significant institutional mechanisms. Furthermore, this study presents a new perspective of customer trust (one-to-many) in the context of ridesharing and uncovers the transfer mechanism between institution-based trust and interpersonal trust.

Political Economy of the Muslim Middle Class in Southeast Asia: Religious Expression Trajectories in Indonesia, Malaysia, and Thailand

The growth of Muslim middle class in the three Southeast Asian countries namely Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand are heavily influenced by each state's political development policy as well as the growing phenomenon of the Muslim market as part of the global market dynamics. This paper aims to describe the phenomenon of state and society relations in regards to policies that influence the growth of the Muslim middle class and how the market contributes to their expansion. The research shows that Muslim middle class in Indonesia is a result of the ever-crisscrossing force between state-driven pro-market policies, market-driven mechanisms, and the development of information technology that creates the demands of modern lifestyles. In terms of the Malaysian context, the Muslim middle-class formation is closely linked to a state driven policy in the form of ethnicity-based policy: an affirmative policy to strengthen the Malays, which is identical with Islam. While for the case of Muslim middle class in Thailand, the formation is largely determined by the central government's political policy. The Thai government uses different political approaches, which varies depending on the level of the Muslim community's compromise in each region. In the end, the differences in the process of Muslim middle-class formation in these countries shaped their Muslim communities' religious expressions both economically and politically in the public sphere.

Political Economy of the Muslim Middle Class in Southeast Asia: Religious Expressions Trajectories in Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand

The growth of Muslim middle class in the three Southeast Asian countries namely Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand are heavily influenced by each state's political development policy as well as the growing phenomenon oftheMuslim market as part of the global market dynamics. This paper aims to describe the phenomenon of state and society relations in regardsto policies that influence the growth of the Muslim middle class and how the market contributes to their expansion. The research shows that Muslim middle class in Indonesia is a result of the ever-crisscrossing force between state-driven pro-market policies, market-driven mechanisms, and the development of information technology that creates the demands of modern lifestyles. In terms of the Malaysian context, the Muslim middle-class formation is closely linked toastate driven policy in the form of ethnicity-based policy: an affirmative policy to strengthen the Malays, which is identical with Islam. While for the case of Muslim middle class in Thailand, the formation is largely determined by the central government's political policy. The Thai government uses different political approaches, which varies depending on the level of the Muslim community’s compromise in each region. In the end, the differences in the process of Muslim middle-class formation in these countries shaped their Muslim communities’ religious expressionsboth economically and politically in the public sphere.

A Truthful Double Auction Framework for Promoting Femtocell Access

With the explosive growth of mobile data traffic in cellular networks, indoor users are always suffering poor data services. Femtocells are widely accepted as an effective way to solve this problem by providing better coverage. In this way, the user quality of service (QoS) can be significantly enhanced. However, a major obstacle to implement the fashion is lacking market-driven mechanisms to incentivize femtocell owners to trade their access permissions (ACPs). Therefore, designing a robust auction mechanism for ACP trading has attracted lots of attention. A critical challenge of designing such an auction mechanism is to ensure the economic property of truthfulness. Most of the prior works on this issue focus on single-sided scenario, where there is only one seller or one buyer. However, multiple femtocells and multiple macrocell users equipments (MUEs) are always involved in practical systems. In this paper, we study a general market model where multiple femtocells can trade with multiple MUEs and show that designing such a truthful auction mechanism for this scenario is challenging. Therefore, we propose a truthful double auction for access permission (TDAP) allocation. We show analytically that our auction mechanism is economic robust (i.e., satisfying three economic properties including truthfulness, individually rationality, and budget balance) and computationally efficient. Moreover, through extensive simulation experiments, we show TDAP can highly improve auction efficiency outperforming prior auction design.

How local market pressures shape leadership practices: evidence from Chile

ABSTRACTChile is well known worldwide for its extensive use of market-driven mechanisms in education. Using a case study strategy in three schools, this paper shows that ‘universal’ voucher system and mixed provision (co-existence of subsidised private and state-funded schools) policies are reshaping school management practices. The paper draws evidence from ethnographic data in disadvantaged Chilean public schools and uses Bourdieu’s notion of field as an analytical tool in order to conceptualise the schools’ practices within their local markets as a symbolic and strategic ‘game’ of competition. One of the main findings is that, in response to market pressures and their specific positions within local markets, school leaders built a market-competitive agenda, preparing detailed strategies and undertaking decision-making practices accordingly. These practices were distinctive in relation to different school market positions, impacting the schools’ priorities, value disputes, and management goals.

Spot pricing in the Cloud ecosystem: A comparative investigation

Background: Spot pricing is considered as a significant supplement for building a full-fledged market economy for the Cloud ecosystem. However, it seems that both providers and consumers are still hesitating to enter the Cloud spot market. The relevant academic community also has conflicting opinions about Cloud spot pricing in terms of revenue generation.Aim: This work aims to systematically identify, assess, synthesize and report the published evidence in favor of or against spot-price scheme compared with fixed-price scheme of Cloud computing, so as to help relieve the aforementioned conflict.Method: We employed the systematic literature review (SLR) method to collect and investigate the empirical studies of Cloud spot pricing indexed by major electronic libraries.Results: This SLR identified 61 primary studies that either delivered discussions or conducted experiments to perform comparison between spot pricing and fixed pricing in the Cloud domain. The reported benefits and limitations were summarized to facilitate cost-benefit analysis of being a Cloud spot pricing player, while four types of theories were distinguished to help both researchers and practitioners better understand the Cloud spot market.Conclusions: This SLR shows that the academic community strongly advocates the emerging Cloud spot market. Although there is still a lack of practical and easily deployable market-driven mechanisms, the overall findings of our work indicate that spot pricing plays a promising role in the sustainability of Cloud resource exploitation.

Climate finance in an age of uncertainty

There was a great deal of uncertainty in the discussions held in Bonn, Germany, 4–14 June in preparation for the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change negotiations later this year in Lima, and in Paris in 2015. This hinged upon what will be contained in the new institutional arrangements for reducing emissions, to be developed in the second commitment period, which replaces the Kyoto Protocol. At the time of writing, it is not yet clear exactly what mechanisms will be put in place. The old architecture favoured market-driven mechanisms, but an ongoing alternative viewpoint that favours non-market-based approaches gained some traction, notably in discussions relating to REDD+. What is not clear is whether this is because developing countries object philosophically to the use of capital markets to stimulate emission reduction through forests, or because the current price of carbon is so low at present. There was also a considerable degree of jockeying for power regarding future funding mechanisms within the next commitment period. The Global Environment Facility has previously played a key role in managing, channelling, and disbursing developed country donor contributions via a multitude of funds, to developing countries. The Green Climate Fund, a product of the Conference of Parties 16 in Cancun (2010), is now likely to be the lead fund for climate action. It is difficult to tell if these developments will contribute anything substantive enough to reduce emissions by the necessary amount required to avoid dangerous human-induced climate change.

Oligopolistic spectrum allocation game via market competition under spectrum broker

For future dynamic spectrum access (DSA) systems, new spectrum management methodologies will be adopted such that the licensed primary spectrum holders can reallocate part of their available bandwidth to the unlicensed secondary service providers for profits, based on market-driven mechanisms. This is known as spectrum market or spectrum trading. This paper aims to propose a dynamic spectrum market model where each spectrum holder has a limited amount of spectrum and is allowed to enter a portion of its available bandwidth into the market managed by a spectrum broker, besides its primary services. To model the price dynamics, a continuous-time price adjustment process governed by a differential equation is considered. Subsequently, we show that the problem is a dynamic N-player oligopoly differential game, subject to the bandwidth constraint. We analyze the feedback Nash equilibrium (NE) solutions for the general game and provide a complete, closed-form solution for the special symmetric case. The solution can be characterized into three distinct regions and transitions between these regions may occur as time evolves, which will be thoroughly investigated. In addition, we propose a discrete-time price adjustment implemented at the spectrum broker. Extensive numerical studies are provided to investigate various aspects of the proposed competition.

Structural policy in the long run: Objectives and priorities

The issue of restoration of the reproduction potential of the Russian economy in the long term is discussed. The emphasis is on necessary structural change, which is seen as a major growth factor of the domestic economy. The negative effect of structural imbalances on the efficiency of market-driven regulation mechanisms is analyzed. The case is made for concentrating economic policy measures on rectifying accumulated imbalances with a view to creating a growth potential for new quality.

Städtebauliche Grossprojekte der Urbanen Renaissance

Abstract This paper discusses large-scale urban (re-)development projects in the area of conflict between public regulation and market-driven mechanisms. No doubt, the implementation of megaprojects is a complex process, depending on the contributions of a large number of actors, parties and institutions with different aims and legitimations. In order to achieve the urban planning qualities, the profits and the desired mixed-use structures, the actors have to rely on each other's cooperation and therefore have to understand each other's motivations and need for room to maneuver. At the same time, the success is, of course, widely dependant on the property markets, but mainly on the extent to which actors can presume market evolutions and flexibly react to them. Part of the challenge for the public sector is the skilful choice of the appropriate set of methods of regulation. In this regard, this paper intends to outline mechanisms in the property market sectors and discuss typical aims of megaprojects from the real estate economics point of view.

Economic Consequences of Conflict: The Rise of Iraq’s Informal Economy

Iraq’s economy has undergone a number of profound changes over the last several decades, many of which have had significant implications for the manner in which the country’s informal economy has evolved. The statist, heavy-handed economic policies of the Ba'athist government concentrated much of Iraq’s productive capacity in nationalized factors, which degraded under the sanctions regime of the 1990s, when both industrial and agricultural production faltered for lack of inputs. When coalition officials arrived in Iraq after the war, they planned on turning Iraq into a free market economy – a model for capitalism in the Middle East (Looney 2003). As part of this plan, they expected private companies, both foreign and domestic, to play a leading role in jump-starting the economy. Free market incentives driven by pentup demand and a massive aid-financed reconstruction program were thought to be sufficient to induce a massive wave of investment and hiring of Iraqi workers (Cha 2004). But violence, crime and uncertainty over the future have undermined investor confidence, preventing market-driven mechanisms from playing their anticipated role. As a result, nominal Gross Domestic Product (GDP) contracted by about 35 percent in 2003. It has recovered little since then, despite the U.S.-led reconstruction efforts. The only part of the economy to have survived both Saddam Hussein and the post-2003 period of instability and insurgency is the country’s informal economy. In fact, there is ample evidence that the country’s informal economy has expanded considerably since Saddam’s overthrow. In this regard, Iraq’s informal economy is following a pattern seen in other parts of the world – the informal economy tends to grow during periods of economic crisis. This phenomenon has occurred on each of the main continents:

How Does Trade Sale Privatization Work? Evidence from the Fixed-Line Telecommunications Sector in Developing Economies

This research examines the of privatization transaction strategy on enterprise performance in developing economies. Focusing on trade sale privatization, we use an event-driven data strategy and time-series regression techniques on data covering fixed-line telecommunications operators between 1980 and 1998. The results show performance benefits are realized when privatization trade sales introduce large-block foreign shareholdings and hybrid forms of governance, such as joint ventures or consortia. These hybrid governance structures capture more complex ownership during privatization restructuring, particularly when compared with the dispersed shareholdings of share issue privatization, which show no discernable effect on performance. We argue traditional financial models are too focused on large-scale market-driven mechanisms at the expense of institution-building mechanisms, and as such fail to capture important contributors to performance improvement. We advance a comparative institutional lens to better understand how firms effects matter for privatization restructuring and performance.

The “Old” Public Management Versus the “New” Public Management: Where Does Public Administration Fit In?

Larry Lynn's piece, Myth of Bureaucratic Paradigm, is provocative to say least. I come to this admission not because of overwhelming popularity of Lynn's work or my enduring affection for author or ... prestige [this] author confers on (Lynn, 145; see also Karl 1976), but because of intellectual merit essay demonstrates. I couldn't agree more with Lynn's overall premise and his conclusion that traditional bureaucratic paradigm of public administration has proven to be much more responsive to democratic values than has revisionists' new, customer-oriented managerialism. And, not to be overlooked, for an outsider, Lynn (152) provides a respectable and comprehensive review of intellectual heritage of field of public administration. That said, I fundamentally disagree with many of Lynn's assertions. In particular, I disagree with one of his central theses: that students of public administration have failed to adequately challenge New Public Management. I also take issue with another theme that runs, perhaps more obliquely, throughout Lynn's piece: methodological claims and interests of New Public Management as compared with those of old public management. Here, Lynn to suggest that, due to a tradition of being unduly careless, not only New Public Management but broader field of public administration itself seems to have let lapse [its] moral and intellectual (145, 155). Let me begin by parting company with Lynn's assertions that traditional public administration was unable to mount a sound, meaningful challenge to revisionist thought advanced by New Public Management. On contrary, a number of public administrationists virulently attacked New Public Management, particularly its reinventing government or National Performance Review (NPR) manifestations. For example, there were many attacks against NPR on grounds that it failed to account for realpolitik of government (see, for example, Carroll 1995; Frederickson 1996; Moe 1994; Rosenbloom 1993). In particular, many challenged theoretical and philosophical underpinnings of NPR, which, they argued, confute fundamental principles of democracy and constitutional rule. Central to their argument was that NPR's call for a shift from administrative bureaucracy to entrepreneurial organizations ignores very nature of democratic government and how it evolved in United States (Goodsell 1993). Moe (1994) points out that NPR fails to account for critical differences between government and private sectors, and, in particular, ignores constitutional premise that government is based on a rule of law and not market-driven mechanisms. He states that the government of United States is a government of laws passed by representatives of people assembled in Congress. It is constitutional responsibility of President and his duly appointed and approved to see that these laws, wise and unwise, are implemented (112). The subordinates would, in turn, be accountable to president, not customers of government agencies, for execution of laws of land. For Moe, bottom line is supremacy of an institutional presidency, where president relies on constitutional powers granted to executive office in governing country. This contrasts with what Nathan (1983) called administrative presidency, where president exerts control over bureaucracy by administrative fiat, and, as some have argued, by circumventing rules, regulations, law, and Congress's constitutional jurisdiction over bureaucracy. Similarly, Carroll (1995) sees political objective of NPR as changing balance of power, control, and authority over federal bureaucracy. A presumption of power would rest in executive branch, and Congress would have little or no role in executive administration. …