334 research outputs found
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Metabolism of Mumbai- expectations, impasse and the need for a new begining
No full textDespite urban areas covering less than 1% of the world, they host over 50% of the world's population. As population and human activities expand they exert heavy environmental pressure through the resource requirement, their production and consumption. Hence, it is important to understand the resource flows into the city, the transformations that take place and the resulting products and wastes. One method of measuring resource use efficiency is through the analysis of urban metabolism. It
provides a good analytical framework for accounting of urban stocks and throughput and helps understand critical processes as well (increasing or decreasing ground water resources, long-term impacts of hazardous construction materials, etc.). We have considered Mumbai, a business and industrial city, with a population of about 18 million, as a case study. It highlights the economic, social and environmental conditions of the city. On the input side, water, energy, food and construction material use are taken into account, and on the output side, waste water, air pollution and municipal solid waste are examined. From the methodological point of view, it is easier to examine the input side
but there are some difficulties from the output end. Similar difficulties can be found in the identification of built-in material stock (buildings, roads, etc.). The material stock is limited to building stock and passenger vehicle fleet. The concept of urban metabolism is put forth as an organizing concept for data collection, analysis, and synthesis on urban systems. The main findings and recommendations of the case study underpin efficient resource urban policy and design, as well as enhance sustainable
production and consumption
Estimating losses to customers on account of mis-selling life insurance policies in India
No full textThis paper presents two approaches that use publicly available data to estimate the loss to investors from mis-selling of insurance products. The first approach uses the number of lapsed policies from the annual reports of the insurance regulator, IRDA, while the second method uses the persistence of premium payments that are reported
in the annual reports of individual insurance companies. Both these methods arrive at a similar estimate a loss of about Rs.1.5 trillion, or $28 billion, to investors owing to mis-selling over the 2004-05 to 2011-12 period
Managerial delegation in monopoly under network effects
No full textThis paper examines the possibility of emergence of incentive equilibrium in the case of monopoly, without relying on agency theory based arguments. It shows that, when there is network effect of consumption, it is optimal for a monopolist to offer sales-oriented incentive scheme to her manager. The extent of sales-orientation of the optimal incentive scheme is higher in the case of stronger network effect. It also shows that both the monopolist and consumers are better off under managerial delegation than in case of no delegation, unlike as in the case of usual oligopoly without network effect
Price vs. quantity in duopoly with strategic delegation: Role of network externalities
No full textThis paper examines the implications of network externalities on equilibrium outcomes in a differentiated products duopoly under strategic managerial delegation through relative performance based incentive contracts. It shows that Miller and Pazgal (2001)'s equivalence result does not go through in the presence of network externalities. Instead, Singh and Vives (1984)'s rankings of equilibrium outcomes under Cournot and Bertrand hold true under relative performance based delegation contracts as well, if there are network externalities. However, when firms can choose whether to compete in price or in quantity, there are two pure strategy Nash equilibria and one mixed strategy Nash equilibrium. Interestingly, in pure strategy Nash equilibria asymmetric competition
occurs, where a firm competes in price and its rival firm competes in quantity. Further, the mixed strategy Nash equilibrium probability of a firm to compete in terms of price increases with the strength of network effects and is always greater than the probability to compete in terms of price
Measuring human development index: The Old, the new and the elegant
No full textThe Human Development Index (HDI) is calculated using normalized indicators from three dimensions-health, education, and standard of living (or income). This paper evaluates three aggregation methods of computing HDI using a set of axioms. The old measure of HDI taking a linear average of the three dimensions satisfies monotonicity, anonymity, and normalization (or MAN) axioms. The current geometric mean approach additionally satisfies the axioms of uniformity, which penalizes unbalanced or skewed development across dimensions. We propose an alternative measure, where HDI is the
additive inverse of the distance from the ideal. This measure, in addition to the above-mentioned axioms, also satisfies shortfall sensitivity (the emphasis on the neglected dimension should be at least in proportion to the shortfall) and hiatus sensitivity to level (higher overall attainment must simultaneously lead to reduction in gap across dimensions). An acronym of these axioms is MANUSH, which incidentally means human in some of the South Asians languages and the alphabets can also be rearranged to denote HUMANS. Using Minkowski distance function we also give an alpha-class of measures, special cases of which turn out to be the old linear averaging method (alpha=1) and our proposed displaced ideal measure (alpha=2) and when alpha>=2 then these class of measures also satisfy the MANUSH axioms
Entry deregulation, labour union response and allocative inefficiency: A study of the airlines industry in India
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