Private Strategies Research Articles

Exploring private financing for biodiversity conservation: stakeholder perspectives and governance in the case of wildflower strips in Germany

ABSTRACT This study explores the understudied role of privately financed ecosystem service provision in biodiversity conservation, focusing on the example of wildflower strips in Germany. Using qualitative methods, it investigates the diversity of private financing schemes, stakeholder involvement, scheme implementation and farmers motivations to engage in private schemes. The results draw on literature-based stakeholder analysis and expert interviews, including ecologists and practitioners, in three German federal states: Baden-Württemberg, Bavaria and Lower Saxony. Findings include a stakeholder map, the identification of four types of private financing schemes, and the formulation of 17 design criteria covering ecological, economic, and social aspects. These criteria aim to guide providers and sponsors and to emphasise the diverse nature of private wildflower strip financing schemes and their role as crucial links among farmers, the private sector, and society. The study highlights private schemes as viable alternatives to public funding but raises concerns about quality control and coordination with public measures. Combining publicly funded agri-environment schemes with private financing is controversial among stakeholders. Government intervention could formalise the private market, improving control and protection, possibly limiting private sector flexibility and attractiveness due to higher levels of bureaucracy. In any case, transparency in management and financial structures is crucial. Policy recommendations overall include incentivising private sector conservation involvement, offering tax credits for private financing, improving government mechanisms, streamlining coordination of public and private conservation at the landscape level and fostering stakeholder networking. Consequently, this study lays a foundational framework for further exploration into the realm of private financing in biodiversity conservation.

A Short term Electricity Load Forecasting for Community Residents Based on Federated Learning and Considering Privacy Protection

INTRODUCTION: As the penetration rate of renewable energy increases and patterns of energy demand evolve, fluctuations on both the supply and demand sides of electricity are becoming more pronounced. Consequently, accurate forecasting of community residential electrical loads has become crucial. OBJECTIVES: Although the widespread adoption of smart meters among residents provides abundant data for model training, strict challenges arise during the training process due to the need for privacy protection and data security. METHODS: This paper proposes a privacy-preserving community residential short-term electric load forecasting method based on federated learning. Initially, the method applies shared random masking encryption to the sensitive data of community residents, ensuring data privacy while maintaining consistency with the original data after preprocessing. Subsequently, a private data aggregation scheme is established to perform dynamic clustering of the community’s electrical load. RESULTS: The clustered model then serves as the basis for establishing individual load forecasting models for each category of community residents to predict short-term electrical loads. Finally, an empirical analysis is performed using the electrical load data from 120 households across 6 communities in a city in Southern China. CONCLUSION: The analysis demonstrates that the proposed method can achieve the prediction of community residential electrical loads without sharing residents’ data, thus verifying the effectiveness of this approach.

DT-Block: Adaptive vertical federated reinforcement learning scheme for secure and efficient communication in 6G

The necessities of security and data sharing have focused on federated learning because of using decentralized data sources. The existing works used federated learning for security, however, it still faces many challenges such as poor security and privacy, computational complexity, etc. In this research, we propose adaptive vertical federated learning using a reinforcement learning approach and blockchain. The proposed work includes three phases: user registration and authentication, machine learning-based client selection, and adaptive secure federated learning. Initially, all the users register their credentials to the cognitive agent, which generates a private key, public key, and random number using a Chaotic Isogenic Post Quantum Cryptography (CIPQC) algorithm. Second, optimal clients are selected for participating in federated learning which improves learning rate and reduces complexity. Here, optimal clients are selected by the Enhanced Multilayer Feed Forward Neural Network (EMFFN) algorithm by considering CSI, RSSI, bandwidth, energy, communication efficiency, and statistical efficiency. Finally, adaptive secure federated learning is performed by the Distributed Distributional Deep Deterministic Policy Gradient (D4PG) algorithm, where the local models are adaptively used by the private strategy based on its sensitivity. The aggregated global models are stored in DT-block (dendrimer tree-based blockchain) which stores the data in a dendrimer tree structure for increasing scalability and reducing search time during data retrieval. The simulation of this research is conducted by NS-3.26 network simulator and the performance of the proposed DT-Block model is estimated based on various performance metrics such as accuracy, delay, loss, f1-score, and security strength this demonstrated that the suggested effort produced better results both in terms of quantitative and qualitative aspects.

PROTECTION OF FOREIGN INVESTMENT IN INDIA: A HISTORICAL ANALYSIS

International investment agreements are the tools of international law by which two or more countries give reciprocal assurance for the protection of foreign investment in their countries. Long before there was no such regime of international property protection. In colonial time the foreign property was subject of the law of foreigner. At that time there was no certainty in international property regime. India had paid heavy price for the same. This paper tries to map out the whole journey of development of international property protection in India. In the first part paper tries to find out the international rule for the protection of foreign property in India. Unfortunately there was no such universal regime prevalent in any part of the world for the protection of foreign property. Second part deals with the development of International property protection in in post-colonial period. In this period newly independent colonies did not trust the foreigners due to its chequered history. Third part deals with the period after liberalization, privatisation and globalisation. In this period India had embraced the international investment law regime as an overall strategy of liberalization, privatisation and globalisation. In this period India had signed most of its International investment agreements. However, in this period India also faced with multiple investment claims by many foreign investors. In wake of these investment claims India had recently spelled out its new Model BIT and terminated its most of the International investment agreements. And finally concludes that there is some problem with the new Model BIT due to which Indian government still facing difficulty in inking new international investment agreements with the countries with whom India has had deep economic ties.

Free Private Strategy and Open-Source Contributions: Evidence from GitHub

Free Private Strategy and Open-Source Contributions: Evidence from GitHub

The Potential of Wine Tourism in the Innovation Processes of Tourism Experiences in the Canary Islands—An Approach to the Case of the Canary Brand

The braided cord vineyard management system of the La Orotava Valley (Canary Islands, Spain) is a unique technique in the world that has been developed in the northern area of the island of Tenerife since the introduction of the first strains from Europe after the conquest of the Canary Islands and that synthesizes the unique wine cultural landscape of the territory. The future sustainability of this landscape seems to be inescapably linked to policies in favour of environmental, social and economic development, primarily through wine tourism. To do this, the methodology addresses the opinions of 16 in-depth interviews of key informants from the sector to understand this cultural landscape’s degree of use and enhancement. The results indicate significant progress in the revaluation and sustainability of the braided cord system (BCS) as part of the public–private strategy in search of its recognition as a BIC. Likewise, the winery sector recognizes the need to move towards a management model for the wine sector of the La Orotava Valley, where wine tourism has a more significant role, that seems to be closed based on the projects and initiatives under development.

Examining the influence of global terminal operators on the performance of container terminals via privatization strategies in the maritime sector

Abstract This research navigates the evolving of global trade through an exploration of the strategic evolution of container terminals, with a specific focus on the integral role played by Global Terminal Operators (GTOs) amid prevailing privatization trends. Recognizing container terminals as critical nodes within the maritime supply chain, the study employs a comprehensive approach anchored in SWOT analysis to uncover the nuanced consequences of privatization, accentuating the collaborative influence exerted by GTOs. The research is dedicated to unraveling the intricate dynamics that shape container terminal performance, with a particular emphasis on operational efficiency, financial sustainability, administrative processes, and infrastructure development. In the era of heightened global economic interconnectivity, the study underscores the paramount importance of understanding the implications of privatization strategies. By providing nuanced insights into the strategic role of GTOs, this research transcends the boundaries of individual terminals, offering valuable perspectives for policymakers, industry stakeholders, and academics grappling with the intricacies of maritime infrastructure development in this transformative era.

A STUDY ON PERFORMANCE EVALUATION OF 5 EQUITY GROWTH MUTUAL FUND SCHEMES IN INDIA

A mutual fund, which is another name for an investing business, is a type of financial instrument that pools the capital of multiple participants and uses it to purchase money market instruments and government securities. To put it simply, the management of the fund uses the funds raised to buy bonds and equities. The purchase of securities is known as the portfolio of the fund. Additionally, the investors split the revenue from this joint investment after subtracting any necessary taxes and levies. NAV is used to compute these costs and levies (Net Asset Value). The purpose of this study is to examine the performance of a five selective Indian mutual fund schemes during a three-year period from 2020 to 2023 using their daily Net Asset Value (NAV). The selected mutual considered for the study are private sector equity growth mutual fund schemes. The funds' performance is evaluated using the Sharpe index, Treynor index, and Jensen alpha, and the results will help investors make smarter investing decisions. The study aims to study the best performer among these 5 mutual funds i.e., HDFC, ICICI, AXIS, KVB and KOTAK MAHINDRA based on the study period. NAV = Value of Securities – Liabilities / No. of units outstanding shares) Keywords: Equity Growth Mutual Fund, performance, risk and return, banks in the private sector, Jenson's, Treynor's, and Sharpe's ratios.

Reforming the structure and models of privatization

The article is devoted to the monitoring of the economic situation in Ukraine, the activities of control bodies and the coverage of approaches to reforming the ownership structure based on privatization processes. The analysis of the situation occurring in the field of privatization characterizes their complexity, which is caused by the state of war and instability in the state, the spread of illegal possession of state property and other destabilizing factors used by the structures of the aggressor country to achieve their own goals. The need for further localization of shadow privatization schemes is determined by the growth of the share of foreign capital in strategic sectors of the economy and in critical infrastructure facilities, which is one of the greatest modern threats to the economic sphere of Ukraine, which is dangerous for the economic independence of Ukraine. In the framework of stabilization privatization, the need to take into account not only national legislation, but also international norms, in particular the provisions of the OECD Declaration «On International Investments and Multinational Enterprises», which deals with the national regime, conflicting requirements for corporations and international investments, which should be applied in current conditions and in the post- war period of Ukraine. In this regard, it is worth defining a state body that will competently and competently manage Russian assets that are subject to sanctions and that will be transferred by partner countries after they are unfrozen for the restoration of our state according to the standards of sovereign funds or national welfare funds. Post-war privatization should contain an evolutionary basis and attention to national assets, especially in basic industries and relatively non-renewable resources that belong to the citizens of Ukraine. Thus, a clear balance is necessary between the needs of the country in the person of its institutions and the rights and freedoms of a person and a citizen, which are guaranteed and narrowing of their content is not allowed when adopting new laws or making changes to existing laws. It is worth preserving the foundations of Article 41 of the Constitution of Ukraine, which stipulates that everyone has the right to own, use and dispose of their property, and no one can be unlawfully deprived of the right to property, which is inviolable and guaranteed by Article 1 of the «First Protocol to the Convention on the Protection of Human Rights and fundamental freedoms». Thus, the design of the future privatization should also take into account the elements of the historical privatization part, which began with the recognition of Ukraine’s independence and is regulated by the provisions of the Decree of the President of Ukraine «On the procedure for allocating lands transferred to collective ownership to agricultural enterprises and organizations» dated August 8, 1995 No. 720, which are still in force today remain relevant in view of today’s challenges (focusing on threats to food security) and sometimes require the intervention of regulatory and law enforcement agencies, since without the past there is no future.

COUNTERFEIT DRUGS SET ALARM BELLS RINGING: COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF DRUG POLICIES

The strategy of price liberalisation and privatisation had been implemented in Sudan over the last decade, and has had a positive result on government deficit. The investment law approved recently has good statements and rules on the above strategy in particular to pharmacy regulations. Under the pressure of the new privatisation policy, the government introduced radical changes in the pharmacy regulations. To improve the effectiveness of the public pharmacy, resources should be switched towards areas of need, reducing inequalities and promoting better health conditions. Medicines are financed either through cost sharing or full private. The role of the private services is significant. A review of reform of financing medicines in Sudan is given in this communication. Also, it highlights the current drug supply system in the public sector, which is currently responsibility of the Central Medical Supplies Public Corporation (CMS). In Sudan, the researchers did not identify any rigorous evaluations or quantitative studies about the impact of drug regulations on the quality of medicines and how to protect public health against counterfeit or low quality medicines, although it is practically possible. However, the regulations must be continually evaluated to ensure the public health is protected against by marketing high quality medicines rather than commercial interests, and the drug companies are held accountable for their conduct.

Significance Of Institutions For Economic Development - Comparative Research

In the Washington Consensus, which was adopted in 1908s and 1990s by developing and former socialist countries, deregulation, liberalization and privatization were seen as most significant. Openness and privatization strategies in the last 15-20 years have become worldwide processes covering many world countries. This process had many elements of universal significance, but there were also many elements specific for the group of countries with similar socio –economic structure and a certain position in the world economy.

Impact of Privatization on Healthcare System: A Systematic Review.

A notable shift in healthcare policy is healthcare privatization, which refers to the transfer of ownership, management, or provision of healthcare services from the public sector to private entities. To provide a narrative examination of the impact of privatization on various dimensions of healthcare, including quality, equity, accessibility, and cost-effectiveness. Policymakers can utilize the findings of this study to make well-informed decisions regarding privatization strategies. A systematic review was implemented using the following databases: PubMed, Scopus, and Google Scholar. Studies conducted from January 2000 to January 2023 in developing or developed countries that assessed the impact of healthcare privatization on population health within public sector institutions were included. Eleven studies were included. The findings revealed diverse perspectives on the impact of healthcare privatization, with four studies (36.4%) supporting privatization (two of these were conducted in Saudi Arabia), six studies (54.5%) opposing it (three of these were conducted in European countries), and one study (9.1%) taking a neutral stance. Two studies investigated the impact on healthcare quality, and both revealed that privatization negatively impacts uninsured patients and low-income populations. In addition, five studies investigated the healthcare access and equity dimensions following privatization: one was in favor, one was neutral, and three were opposing it. Four studies investigated the cost-effectiveness dimension, with three in favor and one study opposing it. This review highlights different perspectives on healthcare privatization. While studies, as those from Saudi Arabia, suggest benefits in terms of efficiency and innovation, others, particularly from European countries, emphasize negative consequences such as inequity and reduced quality. This emphasizes the need for more investigations to understand privatization's impact on healthcare.

The Geomarketing and the competitiveness of the spaces urban Morocco

The geomarketing, which combines data analysis with location-based marketing, is a powerful lever for enhancing the attractiveness and competitiveness of cities. In Morocco, the growing urbanization in a context of urbanization calls for innovative approaches to urban development. The detailed analysis of the spatial dynamics using the tools of the geomarketing (flow mapping, geo-location of consumers, segmentation, geographical, etc) can better understand the uses and needs in a given territory. These insights can effectively guide the public and private strategies in terms of urban planning, mobility, economic development and tourism. However, the respect of ethics and privacy in the use of data technology remains a key issue. To develop in a responsible manner the use of geomarketing in Morocco, frames, protectors of the personal data is required, as well as the strengthening of the research and public-private partnerships virtuous. Thoughtful integration of the geo-marketing can help the moroccan cities to improve their competitiveness, sustainability and the quality of life of citizens.

Preconditions for efficiency and affordability in mixed health systems: are they fulfilled in the Australian public-private mix?

The Australian health system is characterised by high quality care by international standards, produced by a mix of public and private provision and funding of healthcare services. Despite good overall results, three issues are of concern. The first issue relates to the public procurement of healthcare, whose flaws have impacted individuals' access to care, and the high out-of-pocket spending. The second issue concerns the sustainability of the private health insurance market, given the government's goal of relieving cost and capacity from the public scheme, incentivising participation. Third, there are existing inefficiencies and inequities related to the duplication resulting from the interaction between public and private schemes. To ensure a sustainable, efficient and equitable health system, structural reforms are necessary to achieve long-term performance improvements. Using a framework for mixed public-private health systems, we assess the extent to which the Australian healthcare system achieves preconditions for efficiency and affordability in competitive healthcare markets.

Betting the farm: Rural illiberal State-building in Angola via Chinese loans

Abstract Angola’s government has historically championed the revival of the agricultural sector as a national priority, though it has remained unclear what role the nation’s peasantry is intended to play. Looking to the future while fixated on the past, the first failed recipe for growth was initially based on nationalizing the colonial export model by incorporating the social and economic forces of the rural economy. The government’s early embrace of authoritarian modernization has since pursued an illiberal rural development model seeking to entrench the state’s control over rural areas and extend elite reproduction capacities, exercised principally through a series of state-owned enterprises. Upon the end of the civil war in Angola in 2002, the timely arrival of Chinese loans and technical assistance allowed the administration of President José Eduardo dos Santos to revitalize this strategy with a return to the establishment of a series of state agro-industrial farms a quarter century later. A historical presidential transition in 2017 upended these strategies of rural governance, leading to a vast privatization scheme of state assets built up over decades. This article reveals how the Angolan state has historically sought to engineer elite minority control over the agricultural sector while marginalizing the vast majority of the main rural economic actor, the peasantry. Likewise, the case study provides insight into the hidden costs of Chinese loans on Angola’s rural economy.

On differential privacy for federated learning in wireless systems with multiple base stations

AbstractIn this work, we consider a federated learning model in a wireless system with multiple base stations and inter‐cell interference. We apply a differentially private scheme to transmit information from users to their corresponding base station during the learning phase. We show the convergence behavior of the learning process by deriving an upper bound on its optimality gap. Furthermore, we define an optimization problem to reduce this upper bound and the total privacy leakage. To find the locally optimal solutions of this problem, we first propose an algorithm that schedules the resource blocks and users. We then extend this scheme to reduce the total privacy leakage by optimizing the differential privacy artificial noise. We apply the solutions of these two procedures as parameters of a federated learning system where each user is equipped with a classifier and communication cells have mostly fewer resource blocks than numbers of users. The simulation results show that our proposed scheduler improves the average accuracy of the predictions compared with a random scheduler. In particular, the results show an improvement of over 6%. Furthermore, its extended version with noise optimizer significantly reduces the amount of privacy leakage.

DOES UNCERTAINTY ABOUT PRIVATIZATION IMPACT EMPLOYEES' PERCEPTIONS? EVIDENCE FROM THE HEALTHCARE SECTOR IN SAUDI ARABIA

The study aimed to detect the relationship between the implementation of hospital privatization in Saudi Arabia and healthcare workers' perceptions regarding work conditions, the level of participation in decision-making, and the relationship between the privatized organization and the HRSD Ministry. The data was collected from 100 healthcare workers in various hospitals across Saudi Arabia. More than half of the healthcare workers believed privatizing the healthcare sector would hurt employment security and increase the workload and hours worked per week, whether the employees have permanent or temporary contracts.However, the workers have a positive perception of work conditions related to progression, teamwork support, the level of training, incentives, and other benefits. The employees also positively perceive the level of participation in decision-making, including training requirements and how assigned tasks are completed. Healthcare workers with fewer years of experience are more optimistic about privatization. Moreover, although the regulations left the authority to determine the appropriate privatization strategy for each governmental organization based on their specific needs and objectives, employees positively perceive the relationship between the privatized organization and the HRSD Ministry.

An Edge-Cloud-Aided Private High-Order Fuzzy C-Means Clustering Algorithm in Smart Healthcare.

Smart healthcare has emerged to provide healthcare services using data analysis techniques. Especially, clustering is playing an indispensable role in analyzing healthcare records. However, large multi-modal healthcare data imposes great challenges on clustering. Specifically, it is hard for traditional approaches to obtain desirable results for healthcare data clustering since they are not able to work for multi-modal data. This paper presents a new high-order multi-modal learning approach using multimodal deep learning and the Tucker decomposition (F- HoFCM). Furthermore, we propose an edge-cloud-aided private scheme to facilitate the clustering efficiency for its embedding in edge resources. Specifically, the computationally intensive tasks, such as parameter updating with high-order back propagation algorithm and clustering through high-order fuzzy c-means, are processed in a centralized location with cloud computing. The other tasks such as multi-modal data fusion and Tucker decomposition are performed at the edge resources. Since the feature fusion and Tucker decomposition are nonlinear operations, the cloud cannot obtain the raw data, thus protecting the privacy. Experimental results state that the presented approach produces significantly more accurate results than the existing high-order fuzzy c-means (HOFCM) on multi-modal healthcare datasets and furthermore the clustering efficiency are significantly improved by the developed edge-cloud-aided private healthcare system.

Transforming the Cimerwa Cement Manufacturing Company in Rwanda through Privatization to Enhance Profitability

The research targeted the challenges encountered in the privatization process impacting the profitability of Cimerwa Cement Manufacturing Company in Rwanda. This investigation held significance for CIMERWA, the researcher, and future scholars. Adopting a case study approach, the research engaged 172 CIMERWA employees, with a sample size of 64 selected through stratified and random sampling methods. Questionnaires and documentary analysis facilitated primary and secondary data collection, while reliability and validity of the instruments were validated via pilot research using Cranach’s Alpha and expert evaluations. SPSS software was employed for data analysis.Findings indicated that inadequate privatization strategies at CIMERWA hinder long-term sustainable performance and goal attainment, leading to escalated capital and maintenance costs, ultimately impacting the company's prosperity. The study emphasized that CIMERWA's efficiency in profitability hinges on its focus on crucial aspects such as material handling systems, warehousing, cost-effective profitability measures, supply chain and inventory management, all pivotal in organizational management. In terms of the benefits derived from privatization efforts, 23.4% of respondents affirmed that these services ensured accountability for profitability, while 60.9% attested to their role in ensuring profitability accountability. Employing the Pearson correlation coefficient in SPSS revealed a strong 96.3% correlation between privatization efforts and profitability. Keywords: Privatization, CIMERWA cement, Profitability, Accountability, Employees.

DP-starJ: A Differential Private Scheme towards Analytical Star-Join Queries

Star-join query is the fundamental task in data warehouse and has wide applications in On-line Analytical Processing (olap) scenarios. Due to the large number of foreign key constraints and the asymmetric effect in the neighboring instance between the fact and dimension tables, even those latest dp efforts specifically designed for join, if directly applied to star-join query, will suffer from extremely large estimation errors and expensive computational cost. In this paper, we are thus motivated to propose DP-starJ, a novel Differentially Private framework for star-Join queries. DP-starJ consists of a series of strategies tailored to specific features of star-join, including 1) we unveil the different effects of fact and dimension tables on the neighboring database instances, and accordingly revisit the definitions tailored to different cases of star-join; 2) we propose Predicate Mechanism (PM), which utilizes predicate perturbation to inject noise into the join procedure instead of the results; 3) to further boost the robust performance, we propose a dp-compliant star-join algorithm for various types of star-join tasks based on PM. We provide both theoretical analysis and empirical study, which demonstrate the superiority of the proposed methods over the state-of-the-art solutions in terms of accuracy, efficiency, and scalability.