Global Navigation Satellite System based tolling: state-of-the-art

Road pricing or road user charging may be understood as an economic concept regarding direct charges applied for using roads. Different pricing paradigms may be distinguished mainly refering to pricing of congested, non-expandable urban networks as well as pricing of expandable, uncongested (principally, interurban) road infrastructure. Numerous technologies within Intelligent Transport Systems can provide support in efficiently applying various charging mechanisms. Recently, among others, tolling systems have been deployed that rely on the Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS). The purpose of this paper is to discuss the state-of-the-art of using GNSS technology in road user charging.     

Giving MMT the credit it is due

Business Economics - Discussions of Modern Monetary Theory elicit surprisingly strong passions. Many of the critiques of MMT by conventional macroeconomists are valid, yet there is a resistance to...     

Civil Society and Investor–state Dispute Settlement: Assessing the Social Dimensions of Investment Disputes in Latin America

Investor–state dispute settlement (ISDS) has come to the forefront of debate over corporate rights in the contemporary era. While proponents laud ISDS as a neutral and efficient means of dispute resolution, critics claim that it shields transnational corporations from the oversight of national legal systems while enhancing their ability to interfere in host state policy matters. Moreover, because dispute settlement is carried out in international tribunals, ISDS is argued to disable citizen-driven politics. Governments have called on arbitration bodies to enhance the transparency of ISDS procedures and open spaces for civil society involvement. This reflects a desire to increase the legitimacy of ISDS in the face of mounting contestation. In this paper, I examine the multiple ways in which civil society actors intervene in investor–state arbitration inside and outside of formal channels. I focus specifically on two disputes involving foreign investors active in the water and hydrocarbons sectors of Argentina and Ecuador, respectively. I find that political pressure exerted by civil society actors influenced government decisions to break with investment rules and helped to shape government positioning within arbitral processes. Civil society actors must therefore be recognised as important participants in investor–state disputes.     

NGOs in Bangladesh: Activities, resources, and governance

This paper reports results from one of the first large, nationally representative surveys of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in a developing country. The NGO sector in Bangladesh is highly organized and relatively homogeneous. Most NGOs utilize a branch and headquarters structure in which branches have limited autonomy from headquarters. At the branch level, most NGOs in the country, whether big or small, focus on credit services, derive more of their income from fees for services than from grants, rely on salaried rather than voluntary staff, keep detailed financial accounts that are externally audited, and hire middle-class college educated men as managers. The convergence to a modal institutional form probably is the result of the persuasive power of ideas, sociological pressures toward acculturation and conformity, as well as material incentives.     

Generation Z Perceptions of a Positive Workplace Environment

Employee Responsibilities and Rights Journal - The most recent generation to enter the workplace, generation Z, has been stereotyped as being less engaged in the workplace, despite being highly...