Social Welfare Perspective Research Articles

Improving Community Welfare Through the Cultivation of Coffee: A Case Study of Bondowoso's Coffee Republic, Indonesia

This paper seeks to examine the efforts of the Bondowoso community to grow coffee to empower and welfare the community. Community empowerment is carried out through the Coffee Republic program as a form of cooperation between local governments and communities. This research applied a qualitative approach. First, data collection is information about community empowerment in the people's coffee program in Bondowoso regency. The population and sample of this study are stakeholders who understand the 'coffee republic' program and the coffee growers. The secondary data is sociocultural information in Bondowoso Regency, East Java. The study used the perspective of human ecology and green social welfare. The first perspective explains the relationship between humans and the surrounding natural environment. While the second one is used to describe the relationship between the environment and social problem-solving resource systems, particularly in rural communities. The results of this study showed that the people's coffee program under the name of the Coffee Republic positively impacted the economic empowerment of the Bondowoso community, especially in providing more jobs and increasing income. This research contributes to giving strategic feedback to regional governments on alternative strategies for empowering a community through coffee production.
 
 Received: 21 April 2022 / Accepted: 28 February 2023 / Published: 5 March 2023

When Will First-Price Work Well? The Impact of Anti-Corruption Rules on Photovoltaic Power Generation Procurement Auctions

Along with the prevalence of photovoltaic (PV) procurement contracts, the corruption between auctioneers and potential electricity suppliers has attracted the attention of energy regulators. This study considers a corruption-proof environment wherein corruption is strictly suppressed. It elaborates a mechanism to explore the impact of corruption-proof measures on PV procurement auctions. It adopts incentive compatible constraints based on revelation principle to reflect PV firms’ optimal utilities. It employs first-price and first-score auctions and uses the Bayesian Nash equilibrium to provide a description of market outcomes. The results show that several strategies have different impacts on social welfare, PV firms’ utility, and the benefits of corruption. First, a first-price auction cannot act as a suitable policy because it may encourage corruption. Second, the first-score choice is desirable for social welfare to fit the forthcoming high-quality and low-price surroundings. Third, the first-score strategy maximizes PV firms’ utility and total income. The implications suggest that regulators ought not to employ first-price auctions in the future PV market from the perspective of social welfare. Another disadvantage of the first-price approach is that it enables the PV firm to maintain the utmost benefit from corruption.

The Interplay Between Subsidy and Regulation Under Competition

This study extends the work of Anand and Giraud-Carrier (2020) [Pollution regulation of competitive markets. Management Science. 66(9), 4193–4206] to an even more general case in which the government offers a subsidy to firms. For the purpose of investigating the interplay between subsidies (rewarding positive externalities) and regulation (punishing negative externalities) under competition, we propose a game-theoretic model to formulate the problem. By Karush–Kuhn–Tucker (KKT) conditions and backward induction, we obtain the following results. They are unique in our new scenario compared to Anand and Giraud-Carrier (2020). First, in terms of abatement, the effects of regulation and subsidy offset when the abatement efficiency is relatively high, and reinforce when abatement is inefficient. From the perspective of social welfare (SW), the effects of regulation are often offset by the effects of subsidy, and vice versa. Second, the relationship between the optimal subsidy rate and regulation depends heavily on the degree of competition and marginal cost of public funds. Third, in product and abatement subsidy schemes, cap-and-trade and taxes remain equivalent under competition. Finally, under certain conditions, a higher product subsidy rate will not necessarily give rise to higher SW at certain regulatory levels. Our research can provide a rationale for social planners who aim to achieve peak of CO2 emissions and carbon neutrality.

Mitigating the Risk of Advanced Cyber Attacks: The Role of Quality, Covertness and Intensity of Use of Cyber Weapons

ABSTRACT Modern countries employ computer networks that manage organizations in the private and public sectors. Cyber-attacks aim to disrupt, block, delete, manipulate or steal the data held in these networks, which challenge these countries’ national security. Consequently, cybersecurity programs must be developed to protect these networks from cyber-attacks in a manner that is similar to operations against terrorism. This study presents several models that analyze a contest between a network operator (defender) that deploys costly detectors to protect the network and a capable cyber attacker. Generally, when the deployed detectors become more potent or the defender exhibits higher vigilance, the attacker allocates more resources to R&D to ensure that the attack remains covert. We show that detectors may be substitutes, complements, or even degrade each other, implying that defenders must account for the cyber weapons’ characteristics and the attacker’s profile and strategic behavior. We derive the optimal number of detectors when the attacker’s R&D process features R&D spillovers and show that targeted detectors act as deterrents against high-quality weapons only if the attacker’s budget is not substantial. Finally, we demonstrate that common cybersecurity practices may be detrimental from a social-welfare perspective by enhancing an arms race with the attacker.

Is it worth promoting battery swapping? A social welfare perspective on provider- and consumer-side incentives

In countries that promote further EV diffusion, battery swapping opens up a market outlet for time-sensitive consumers as well as another green policy channel. To better understand this phenomenon from the perspective of policy-making, this study establishes a Hotelling model of a competitive market comprising a battery swapping service provider and a charging service provider. The analyses of three scenarios, no subsidization, consumer subsidization, and provider subsidization, reveal how to maximize social welfare. Considering subsidy amount, consumer time preferences, service time, and operating costs, the findings provide valuable insights for policymakers. Whereas incentive programs are generally helpful for battery swapping development and social welfare improvement, it is more effective to subsidize service providers than end consumers. Considering subsidy opportunity cost, it is necessary to control incentive amount and make continuous adjustments to promote battery swapping services without harming charging services.

Reforming Electricity Access and End-Use Efficiency Policies in India – A Social Welfare Perspective

Social welfare has been believed to be a trickle-down effect of power sector reform policies, and there have been extensive debates on whether the trickle-down happens in reality. Such perceived benefits are arguably not fully realised in an emerging economy like India, where distribution utilities are at the crossroads of financial instability and social obligations related to ensuring universal access and energy efficiency. Hence, this paper delves into existing empirical literature to identify analytical evidence that links electricity access, end-use efficiency, household welfare, the economics of supply, the environment, and regional endowment. Further, policy documents were examined to map the evolution of such interventions and their intended welfare outcomes. Since the existing studies lack a joint evaluation of the social impacts of access and efficiency interventions, we argue for analysing the nexus of electricity access, energy efficiency, and welfare and thereby bridging these disparate streams of literature. Even though there has been a deluge of electricity access and end-use efficiency policies implemented in India with the expectation of delivering societal welfare, there is a dearth of retrospective research examining analytical evidence on the realisation of such an expectation. This study contributes to the limited literature available on empirically established welfare outcomes of access and efficiency reforms in the Indian power sector and attempts to highlight the need for research on analysing the interdependencies between welfare outcomes of these reforms.

가정외보호 청소년의 소년법상 통고 후 경험에 관한 질적사례연구

The purpose of this study is to deeply understand notification experiences of youths in out-of-home care through their voices and to suggest implications from the perspective of social welfare. This study investigated the specific aspects of youth''s experiences in notification and post-notification. Furthermore, this study tried to understand the experiences of youths in out-of-home care at a crossroads between the out-of-home care system and the juvenile justice system, searching for support strategies in both systems from the perspective of social welfare. To fulfill the research question, this study collected qualitative data through in-depth interviews with youths in out-of-home care who had notification experience and conducted a qualitative case study. The results of the study were as follows. Through cross-case analysis, the study tried to understand the notification experience and discover its meaning in the context of living conditions and situations around each point of notification experience of the participants. As a result, 12 meaning units, 4 subcategories, and 1 main topic were derived. The main topic covering the notification experiences of the participants was ‘drift and discriminated life by others’. This study suggested policy implications based on the research results and discussions.

Development of Grounded Theory in Social Sciences: A Qualitative Approach

Grounded theory (GT) is a general research method that provides the efficient generation of theory from data, which are collected by a strong, sound, and fair research method. It is an inductive methodology that systematically collects and analyzes data for developing theory on human behavior in social welfare perspectives. It is considered as one of the most popular qualitative research methodologies in the world. It is originally developed by two American sociologists Barney Galland Glaser and Anselm Leonard Strauss in 1967 through the publication of their revolutionary book The Discovery of Grounded Theory. It emphasizes the importance of developing an understanding of human behavior through a process of discovery. Grounded theory has originated in sociology, and at present it has become a key methodological setting in a wide range of other disciplines, such as in nursing, physiotherapy, healthcare, education, anthropology, psychology, management, information systems, software engineering, etc. It is useful both for expert and novice researchers to generate new explanatory theories. This article tries to discuss grounded theory methodology through the discussion of its origin and development, basic principles, characteristics, advantages and disadvantages, and its usefulness in social science researches for qualitative analysis.

The disability employment quota, between social policy and antidiscrimination

Many countries worldwide resort to quotas in order to favour the employment of disabled people. Yet, the quota as a policy tool has an ambivalent meaning: while it has been conceived as an advanced form of antidiscrimination policy tool in domains such as gender and racial inequalities, in the sector of disability, it has tended to be theorized as an outdated measure, belonging to a social welfare perspective opposed to the more recent equalitarian policy frame. This article revisits this theoretical debate on the disability employment quota by shifting the focus from a normative discussion to an empirical investigation of the meanings policymakers have endowed it with. I draw on the case of France, where the quota scheme is a cornerstone of disability employment policy: post–World War I provisions were at the origin of a series of reforms extending and reinforcing the quota, in 1957, 1987 and 2005 – leading to the current 6% disabled worker quota imposed to private and public organizations of 20 employees or more. Tracing the historical trajectory of this policy tool and its uses by means of parliamentary debates and secondary sources, I show how quotas in France have had more complex meanings than what the social welfare versus antidiscrimination dichotomy suggests. Before the rise of antidiscrimination policy, they were thought of as a progressive form of social policy, as opposed to more segregative interventions such as pensions or sheltered employment. The adoption of antidiscrimination provisions in 2005 then led to a hybridization between quotas and antidiscrimination policy.

Eco-Innovation in New Energy Vehicle Supply Chains under Government Subsidies

The pressure to reduce emissions has induced the government to provide subsidies to urge eco-innovation in the new energy vehicle industry. Although the giving of such subsidies to the new energy vehicle industry has been practiced for a long time, few studies consider how the subsidy policies affect social welfare and the manufacturers’ profits and eco-innovation levels in the presence of the technology gap and the spillover effect. This paper fills the gap in the literature by studying two competitive supply chains consisting of two manufacturers and two retailers. Under three different subsidy policies, we derive the equilibrium outcomes. We find that, as the technology gap increases, the eco-innovation level of the leader increases, whereas the eco-innovation level of the follower decreases. We further investigate the conditions under which subsidy policy is better from the perspective of eco-innovation levels, firms, and social welfare. Specifically, under the centralized setting, the social welfare is lower with the unit production subsidy than with the green technology investment subsidy when the technology gap is low.

Entropy profiles of Schelling’s segregation model from the Wang–Landau algorithm

We evaluate Schelling's segregation outcomes from the square lattice, regular random networks, and clustered regular random networks by situating them in the probability distribution of the entire outcome space of satisfaction and segregation. To do so, we employ the Wang-Landau algorithm and calculate the entropy and the number of states as a function of satisfaction and segregation. According to the results, satisfaction tends to increase with segregation, irrespective of the network structure. Moreover, segregation occurs almost surely when satisfaction is maximized, which we also algebraically derive and confirm on infinite-size networks. The average ratios of the neighbors of the same tag are about 67% for the square lattice and regular random networks and about 73% for clustered regular random networks with a clustering coefficient of 0.37(1). Thus, clustering increases segregation on regular random networks. Further, we find that Schelling's path-dependent process generates sharper segregation than expected by random configurations, an outcome symptomatic of over-optimization from the social welfare perspective. Adopting an alternative rule restricting individuals' choice set may reduce segregation without compromising on satisfaction.

Analysis of Relative Importance of Children's Disaster Vulnerability from the Perspective of Social Welfare

Discussion and reference to children's vulnerability to disasters has only recently begun. Therefore, studies on children's vulnerability to disasters are still lacking. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to investigate the factors of children's vulnerability in the event of a disaster from the point of view of social welfare, and to analyze the relative importance of children's vulnerability to disasters for experts. Through this, it is hoped that children's vulnerability to disasters will be reflected in future disaster policy making. The analysis results are as follows. Looking at the opinions of experts, in terms of the vulnerability of children to disasters in the event of a disaster, psychological and safety vulnerabilities were recognized as the most important. Second, experts recognized that physical vulnerability was important. Finally, experts recognized developmental vulnerability as important. In particular, considering the complex weight, disaster welfare experts recognized the most important vulnerability among children's vulnerability in the event of a disaster, including dependence on their parents.

Does CSR influence privatization wave?

AbstractIn this paper, we formulate a mixed oligopoly model with many public firms and the consumer's cognition of the CSR activity of private firms. We show that the privatization wave will be beneficial for incumbent firms while harming consumers; more importantly, from the perspective of social welfare, consumer cognition on CSR will suppress any privatization wave, while whether the degree of “Cheap‐Talk” CSR suppresses or boosts the privatization wave depends on the degree of “Cheap‐Talk” CSR and the number of incumbent public firms.

Problems of Mobility Rights for Persons with Disabilities on the Basis of the Definition of (Persons with) Disabilities under the Current Law

In Korean society, the right to mobility of persons with disabilities is at a considerably lower level from the perspective of legal theory as well as from a practical point of view.
 Under the current law, the definition of persons with disabilities recognizes disabilities as personal problems, a policy framework regards the mobility plans for them as ones that need to be solved through secondary or additional measures rather than seeking a fundamental solution. In addition, theory, the rights of persons with disabilities have also been confined to and discussed from the perspective of social welfare, not the perspective of freedom or equality. This not only goes against the global trend that views disabilities as a social problem but also neglects the duty of the state to come up with practical measures for persons with disabilities who are in desperate need of mobility.
 Above all, a thorough implementation of the plan to increase the number of means of transportation based on the existing laws must be guaranteed, and it is strongly required to revise the legal definition of disabilities and persons with disabilities in order to find the ways to fundamentally break down the social barriers to disabilities in the future.

What Drives Petrol Price Dispersion across Australian Cities?

Petrol directly impacts the ability of and extent to which households can engage in day-to-day activities and ultimately directly influences the aggregate economic activity. Petrol price increases can lead to major economic disruption, especially among the most vulnerable, such as low-income families. In Australia, petrol prices differ substantially between metropolitan and regional areas, and regional drivers must pay more for purchasing petrol than those in capital cities. This research explored why retail petrol prices vary from one city to another within and between Australian regions. In this study, clustering methods and panel models will be used to identify factors that cause price differences. The findings revealed that a considerable part of the price differences arose from specific characteristics of cities that influence the demand and supply of petrol, thereby causing variations in price decisions. Petrol prices were substantially influenced by wholesale petrol prices, oil prices, petrol and diesel vehicles, population density, station density, and public transport accessibility. These factors are the main determinants that contribute significantly to price variations between Australian cities. The findings provide critical information for economic agents that interact in this market. From a social welfare perspective, government authorities can consider these factors to improve living standards and consumers’ welfare under price pressure in regional cities.

Disposable or reusable? Packaging strategy and pricing decision for fresh food considering environmental policies

AbstractPackaging has become an important concern of fresh food supply chains and will exert a growing influence under environmental policies. In this paper, we have discussed three specific issues to investigate fresh food supply chains’ packaging strategy, that is, whether to use disposable packaging containers (DPCs) or reusable packaging containers (RPCs), whether to purchase or rent RPCs, and the influences of environmental policies. Our research has generated some key findings. First, we find that penalty (such as taxes) and reward (such as subsidies) are simultaneously needed to motivate supply chains to choose RPCs. In terms of the “purchasing or renting” choice, it highly depends on the relative magnitude of the purchase and rental subsidies, along with the number of uses of RPCs and the perishability of fresh food. We also conclude that reusing RPCs for more times has two‐sided effects, that is, the effect of cost saving and the effect of accelerated deterioration. Thus, it is not recommended to excessively reuse RPCs. In addition, we make two extensions. First, we consider endogenous tax rate and subsidy rates and discuss from the perspective of social welfare. Second, we consider endogenous sales price and rental price of RPCs and study the optimal decisions of the RPC operator. Results show that the government should establish a classified tax and subsidy system for packaging containers, and meanwhile benchmarking prices for RPC services should be set to curb the RPC operator's free‐riding behavior.

The Impact of Government Intervention and Cap-and-Trade on Green Innovation in Supply Chains: A Social Welfare Perspective

This paper discusses the impact of government intervention (greenness threshold limit) and cap-and-trade policy on green investment, stakeholder profits and social welfare under different power structure scenarios in the green supply chain. First, a two-level green supply chain system is constructed: a manufacturer that produces green products and complies with cap-and-trade policies and a retailer that sells green products. Based on the Stackelberg game and Cournot game, we compare the optimal solutions under the government intervention mechanism and cap-and-trade mechanism with manufacturer leadership, retailer leadership and equal power. The results are as follows: (1) both government intervention and the cap-and-trade mechanism are conducive to an increase in green technology innovation and profit, but excessive control will lead to a decline in social welfare. (2) The results in the concentrated scenario were better than those in the dispersed scenario. In the decentralized state, the result of equal power is the best, the result of retailer leadership is next, and the result of manufacturer leadership is the worst. (3) The lower cost of green investment will cause enterprises to give up purchasing carbon emission permits from the carbon market.

Optimal WACC in tariff regulation under uncertainty

In the regulation of network tariffs, the compensation for the opportunity costs of capital through the Weighted Average Costs of Capital (WACC) plays a crucial role. Determining the appropriate level for the WACC is, though, problematic because of the uncertainty about the future conditions in capital markets. When the WACC is set above the future opportunity costs of capital, consumers will pay too much, while when the WACC is below that level, network operators may be unable to finance investments affecting quality of network services. In this paper, we explicitly take this uncertainty into account when we determine the optimal WACC for the tariff regulation of an electricity network. By trading off consumer surplus and expected disruption costs in the electricity grid, we conclude that from a social-welfare perspective in most cases the optimal WACC in tariff regulation is above the historical mean costs of capital. Only in case of high uncertainty about the true costs of capital while network operators are able to quickly increase investment levels, the optimal WACC is below the historical mean because then it is less likely that the WACC is constantly insufficient to cover actual costs of capital. However, when network operators cannot quickly increase investment levels the optimal WACC is always above the historical mean cost of capital.

Task Scheduling in Three-Dimensional Spatial Crowdsourcing: A Social Welfare Perspective

Task Scheduling in Three-Dimensional Spatial Crowdsourcing: A Social Welfare Perspective

Bad to All? A Novel Way to Analyze the Effects of Fee-for-Service on Multiple Grades Hospitals Operation Outcomes.

It is a consensus that Fee-for-Service (FFS) is a traditional medical insurance payment scheme with significant disadvantages, namely the waste of health care resources. However, the majority of the prior works that draw such conclusions from the perspective of social welfare while analyzing the impacts of FFS on operation outcomes of hospitals still lack attention from the existing literature, considering the fact that the majority of public hospitals are self-founding. Under this motivation, we collected operation data of 301 public hospitals with different grades (grade II and III) in central China. Here, we present a novel statistical evaluation framework on the impact of FFS on hospital operation outcomes from four dimensions (financial income, efficiency, medical service capacity, and sustainability) using fixed-effects multivariate regression. With verification by the robustness test, our results indicate that: (i) The classification of the hospital (COH) significantly affected the impacts of FFS on hospitals’ operations. (ii) For grade III hospitals, FFS leads to higher financial income, medical service capacity (MSC) and longer length-of-stay (LOS). (iii) However, as for grade II hospitals, hospitals with FFS adoptions achieve lower financial income, lower MSC and shorter LOS, which violates the common sense from previous works. (iv) FFS has a significant negative impact on public hospital’s sustainable development; however, there is lack of evidence showing that sustainability would be affected by the interaction effects between FFS and COH. We believe these new findings from the perspective of hospital operation provide insights and could serve as a reference for the healthcare payment hierarchical reform by COH in low and middle-income countries (LMICs), which are going through the primary stage of the healthcare reform.