Narrow Results

Economic behaviour observed in experiments and in people's everyday dealings is often at variance with predictions and explanations based on standard theory. The findings of systematic patterns of such economic behaviour provide significant opportunities to extend the usefulness of economics. However, like the hesitation of participants in economic experiments to give up their coffee mugs, economists appear reluctant to take advantage of these opportunities.

The focus of this paper is on competition policy and law in the ASEAN countries. The paper begins with a descriptive evaluation of competition policy in the ASEAN countries. We then look at the effect of economic structure on the probability of early adoption of competition law among the ASEAN countries after which the competition laws of the ASEAN countries are evaluated in terms of objectives, jurisdictional exception, horizontal agreements, vertical agreements, definition and abuse of dominant position and mergers. We find that the competition laws of the four ASEAN countries that have implemented competition law are not completely harmonized.

The trajectory of Singapore's population size and composition can be mapped out with its progression through the various phases of demographic transition from high birth and death rates in the post-war years to very low birth and death rates today, all within the context of rapid economic and social development that has taken place in the past 50 years. Population planning has been integral in Singapore's national development strategy, balancing the economy's needs for more and better qualified workers with social considerations such as the dependency burden and the integration of large numbers of foreigners in a global city-state. This paper considers Singapore's population and manpower planning policies, with an account of the country's passage through the various stages of its demographic transition, and how its working age population composition has evolved. Population and labor force policies are examined with specific consideration of the social, economic and political implications resulting from those policy choices. A final section considers the challenges for the future stemming from these demographic trends.

With China’s rapidly aging population, this paper constructs a policy model using overlapping generation (OLG) model and the computable general equilibrium (CGE) modeling to analyze the second-child policy and delaying retirement policy. Our research findings suggest that considering the short-term effects, delaying the retirement age imposes a greater impact on the economy than the second-child policy. Its economic impact increases initially, but then decreases to a stable level showing a diminishing influence. In the long term, the second-child policy has greater ability to boost the economy than the delaying retirement age policy and its economic impact gets stronger. From an industrial output perspective, the two policies exert greater influence on agriculture, light industry, finance and service sector than on construction and heavy industries. From an industrial import and export perspective, the two policies have great influence on finance, electric power, and fossil energy more than they do on the agricultural sector. From a monetary perspective, the impacts are greater on household income followed by the government income and corporate income, respectively. The policies also make a bigger difference to fixed capital than to changes in deposits and loans.

The Vietnam economy has gained lots of achievements after the financial crisis 2007–2011, until it reached a low inflation rate of 0.6% in 2015. This paper measures the volatility of market risk in Vietnam banking industry after this period (2015–2017). The main reason is the vital role of the bank system in Vietnam in the economic development and growth in recent years always goes with risk potential and risk control policies.

This research paper aims to figure out the increase or decrease in the market risk of Vietnam banking firms during the post-low inflation period 2015–2017.

First, by using the quantitative combined with comparative data analysis method, we find out the risk level measured by equity beta mean in the banking industry is acceptable, although it is little higher than ($>$) 1.

Then one of its major findings is the comparison between risk level of banking industry during the financial crisis 2007–2009 compared to those in the post-low inflation time 2015–2017. In fact, the research findings show us market risk level during the post-low inflation time has increased much. We compare beta in two periods because we want to figure out the reason underlying the fact beta has increased. One of the reasons is that the accumulated banking risks during the longer time and criteria to meet Basel 2 have been partially contributing to increasing market risk.

Finally, this paper provides some ideas that could provide companies and government more evidence in establishing their policies in governance. This is the complex task but the research results show us warning that the market risk might be higher during the post-low inflation period 2015–2017. Our conclusion part will recommend some policies and plans to deal with it.

Estimating the potential economic impacts of drought is increasingly prominent in policy discussions on resilience to future population and climate changes. We develop a scenario-based analytical framework for estimating the economic impacts of droughts under a range of assumed climate and policy conditions. The scenarios modeled take account of different assumptions regarding a drought event, including: the source of the drought (green or blue water), temporality, and critically, long-term and short-term policy-making choices. Applying the framework to the UK economy we estimate that, depending on the severity of the drought event and short-term policy choices, the impacts could range from 0.35% to 4.3% of total output in terms of total production. Different long-term policy choices could mitigate the impacts for drought events with similar severity and duration.

Hydrologic, climatic, regulatory and economic factors interact in complex ways to influence groundwater conditions. These relationships can be difficult to measure and model but are important for water management and for considering viable futures for regional economies. This paper proposes a strategy for an improved understanding of how groundwater levels reflect signals of regulatory, economic and climate factors. Most existing econometric studies of groundwater use focus on large-scale irrigated agriculture and urbanized areas in first world nations, where groundwater extraction data is available. In much of the world, groundwater extraction data are not available for individual farms and other water users. The goal of this study is to explore the responsiveness of groundwater levels (a more widely available measure of groundwater conditions) to regulatory, economic and climate signals in rural areas, using a growing body of remotely sensed land cover data. Pooled Ordinary Least Squares econometric models examine the effects of regulatory, climatic and economic factors on groundwater levels in rural Arizona. Groundwater regulations, recharge projects, housing units and irrigated acreage have statistically significant relationships to groundwater levels in the study areas. This approach can be valuable for understanding factors that influence groundwater conditions and which may be useful in managing groundwater use in widespread areas where groundwater extraction data is unavailable.

This paper briefly introduces the basic characters, operation methods, transaction structure and the main functions of the Public-Private Partnership (PPP) and adopts the investigation method of empirical research to analyze and collate in detail the PPP policies and regulations issued by state ministries and commissions since 2014. It also analyses the short-coming existing at the legal level and proposes the suggestions of the next steps should be taken. At the strategic level, PPP national level legislation has a unique institutional innovation significance for current China.

In this paper, we analyze how India’s climate change policy is framed, formulated and implemented and argue that it requires carefully balancing of domestic and international interests. Given the country’s population size, composition and projected economic growth, India will, in the next few years, see its most significant energy demand upsurge along with a massive need for infrastructure. As projected by the International Energy Agency, “nearly 60% of its CO₂ emissions in the late 2030s will be coming from infrastructure and machines that do not exist today”. As a result, policy choices made today by India’s decision-makers and international negotiators will have severe implications for the world.

This paper analyzes global emission trends, climate change impacts and India’s international and domestic climate policies—from Paris to Glasgow and New Delhi to rural India. Furthermore, we examine the core constraints that Indian policymakers face and draw attention to shortcomings in India’s climate change policies, particularly concerning continued investment in coal despite the country’s widely lauded efforts to embrace renewables. We argue that fossil fuel subsidies are a delicate political issue with significant implications for many election-determining poor citizens—hence accompanying “just transition” measures are essential.

Business environments are complex and evolve dynamically to react to environmental or contextual changes. Nowadays, many businesses use business processes to describe and automate their operations. However, current business process systems are based on executing statically defined workflows, which do not naturally allow the handling of emergent needs. In this work we are developing mechanisms to allow for a dynamic adaptation of workflows, and consider assurances that the derived workflows still achieve the main aims of the originals. Specifically, these mechanisms are self-adaptive workflows, based on policies, and self-managed adaptations, based on the refinement checking of an underlying formal model. The formal model, developed using the process algebra known as communicating sequential processes (CSP), allows for checking the correctness of desired adaptations at system runtime and when the adaptation is being attempted. In this paper we present the overview of our approach.

This chapter examined historical occurrence of natural disasters, policy frameworks related to disasters, implementation arrangements and challenges, national and household resources to natural disasters in Malawi. It is found that Malawi has an updated national disaster risk reduction (DRR) policy that is coordinated by the Department of Disaster Risk management and Affairs within the Office of President and Cabinet. The policy is linked to various related sectoral policies and to national growth and development strategy. There are various committees established at various levels that deliberate on issues related to disaster risk reduction and management. At national level, priority areas have been identified. In addition, the chapter concluded that household strategies such as crop diversification, irrigation farming and income generating activities have positive and significant contribution on reducing disaster risk to household food production and let alone welfare.

While Digital Libraries (DLs) are moving towards universally accessible collections of human knowledge, considerable advances are needed in DL methodologies and technologies to make this happen. Interoperability between DLs is a crucial requirement to achieve this goal. The European project, DL.org, is focused on advancing the state of the art in this area by proposing solutions, fostering best practices and shared standards, drawing on the knowledge acquired during the DELOS Network of Excellence, and harnessing the expertise of DL domain stakeholder communities. By serving this goal, DL.org is paving the way for the embedding of new research achievements into real-world systems, opening up new cross-domain research perspectives and supporting the advancement of the European Information Space for the knowledge-based economy.

The 1906 Convention and the 1944 Treaty establish the distribution of surface water of the Rio Grande (RG), Colorado, and Tijuana Rivers between the United States and Mexico. Neither of these treaties addresses groundwater management. Only Minute 242 to the 1944 Treaty, regulates salinity for groundwater. Specifically, Minute 242.5 establishes that there is a lack of “conclusion by the Governments of the United States and Mexico for a comprehensive agreement on groundwater in the border areas.” The lack of regulation has contributed to overdraft and degradation of the water quality in several aquifers along the US–Mexico border. Recommendations for an institutional and legal framework under an umbrella agreement, addressing water bank as allocation tool, attempt to fill the legal vacuum of international and interstate groundwater management in the US–Mexico border region. In addition, these recommendations can be adapted to other transboundary basins around the world.