Search results for "economies"
showing 10 items of 1069 documents
Expansion of private secondary education : lessons from recent experience in Tanzania
2000
International audience; The private sector's role in education has been the subject of much analysis and policy debate in recent years. In developing countries, public resources for education are limited and governments have traditionnally relied on private education, particularly at the post-basic levels, to meet the excess demand for education. Even when excess demand is not a major issue, advocates of private education note that private schools can be more efficient than their public sector counterparts, delivering more value in terms of student achievement per investment of resources. In this article we explore Tanzania's experience with private education during the early 1990s, a perio…
Impact of Mediation devices on the Museum Visit Experience and on Visitors' Behavioural Intentions
2012
This study draws on the experiential approach and has two main goals: to explore the different dimensions of the museum experience regardless of whether it is mediated by mediation devices (e.g., audio guides, interactive terminals, SmartPhones, tablets, augmented reality), and to identify the impact of such devices on visitors' behavioural intentions. The authors conduct a qualitative and exploratory investigation to address the following questions: Does the development of such devices affect both experience dimensions and the audience's behavioural intentions? Which components of a museum visit are concerned?
A Stackelberg-game approach to support the design of logistic terminals
2014
This paper deals with the design of logistic terminals taking Sicily, in the South of Italy, as a case study. It focuses on consolidation terminals for truckers and addresses the problem of optimising location pattern and public share in investments. This problem is solved through a Stackelberg game between the designer and the collective of road carriers. So a bilevel approach combines a system-optimum problem, at the upper level, with the carrier equilibrium problem, at the lower level. The choice behaviour of the lower-level player is simulated by a random utility model. The output of the game suggests that private companies and society should share the investments and the public contrib…
Joint route planning under varying market conditions
2007
PurposeTo provide empirical evidence on the level of savings that can be attained by joint route planning and how these savings depend on specific market characteristics.Design/methodology/approachJoint route planning is a measure that companies can take to decrease the costs of their distribution activities. Essentially, this can either be achieved through horizontal cooperation or through outsourcing distribution to a logistics service provider. The synergy value is defined as the difference between distribution costs in the original situation where all entities perform their orders individually, and the costs of a system where all orders are collected and route schemes are set up simulta…
Joint Route Planning under Varying Market Conditions
2006
Purpose - To provide empirical evidence on the level of savings that can be attained by joint route planning and how these savings depend on specific market characteristics.Design/methodology/approach - Joint route planning is a measure that companies can take to decrease the costs of their distribution activities. Essentially, this can either be achieved through horizontal cooperation or through outsourcing distribution to a Logistics Service Provider. The synergy value is defined as the difference between distribution costs in the original situation where all entities perform their orders individually, and the costs of a system where all orders are collected and route schemes are set up s…
Assessing Cloud Infrastructure Costs in Communications-Intensive Applications
2012
By deploying cloud infrastructure services, companies strive at achieving faster time to market, improved scalability, lower up-front costs, and lower IT management overhead, among other benefits. However, in longer term, the use of cloud infrastructure may incur significant costs; furthermore, these costs depend both on the required infrastructure resources and on the mode of infrastructure deployment. Therefore, the choice of a particular deployment mode should be justified with a systematic analysis of the associated costs. In this paper, a model for assessing the costs of alternative cloud infrastructure deployment scenarios is introduced. This model decomposes the infrastructure costs …
PRODUCTION FLEXIBILITY AND ADAPTING TO MARKET CHANGES
2007
Abstract This paper describes those situations when a company, an organization, in its search for minimum costs, including those involved by investment, and production flexibility, manages to adapt to those changes that ensure survival on the market. Economies of scale are an attraction for any firm and thus globalized, huge firms emerge, conquering continuously developing markets. However, smaller firms face market changes that are usually dangerous in terms of sustainability. The paper highlights those market components that provide information on adapting production through flexibility.
How endogenous asymmetries in interregional market access trigger regional divergence
2005
International audience; We investigate how asymmetric trade patterns in differentiated products affect the regional distribution of economic activities. The asymmetry in interregional market access is an endogenous result of price competition and industry location and arises for intermediate values of trade costs. We show that the emergence of one-way trade in differentiated products gives rise to strong agglomeration forces and leads to the absorption of the smaller region's industry by the larger region. The number of spatial equilibria increases once the pattern of trade is endogenously accounted for.
Éléments d'analyse économique des faux diplômes
2007
Despite the fact that fake degrees have been used since the creation of legitimate diplomas, the fake degrees business is reaching epidemic proportions, notably because of globalization, new information and communication technologies and “diploma race”. We define the concept of fake degrees and distinguish different kinds of fakes. We also indicate the main functions of diplomas in the economic literature. We identify the supply and demand sides of the market of fake degrees and also consider other affected parties. We show that this growing business generates several negative spillovers that harm, among others, non traditional education institutions such as distance learning institutions a…
A comparison of internal and international barriers to trade
1999
In a world in which barriers to trade at all levels - international and internal - are mostly a by-product of the implementation by governments of different regulatory policies to deal with domestic or local problems, the mechanisms that are set in motion by the operation of competition among the governments inhabiting the different jurisdictional tiers of federal countries lead to outcomes that are different from those generated by the 'agreed-upon' rules that govern the relations of national governments with each other in matters of international trade. A model is used to compare two ways of dealing with the external damages that are consequent on the pursuit of beneficial domestic regula…