The Worldwide Movement in Private Universities: Revolutionary Growth in Post-Secondary Higher Education

The end of the Cold War, which resulted from the collapse of communism and the spread of free market ideas in the former Soviet Union, China, and nations in Eastern Europe, has brought about many dramatic and momentous changes on the world scene. One remarkable development not widely recognized outside specialized academic circles is the emergence of new institutions of higher learning in the private sector of previously command economies and also in many developing countries that had been wedded to a culture of socialism for decades. The “privatization” of higher education is by all accounts a global phenomenon. Very few systematic studies of these new trends in private post‐secondary education exist to date, although the impact of this development could be far‐reaching not only for higher education but also for the social and economic development of many societies in the world. In this paper we attempt to analyze the phenomenon of new private universities in non‐Western nations, focusing on the developing world in general, and Asia in particular. What missions have these institutions chosen? Which models are these institutions following? What challenges do they face? How are they coping with their relationship to existing public universities? How are they dealing with tuition and budgetary issues? What sources of funding are they tapping into? How are they dealing with issues of equity, excellence, and access? In the composition of their faculty, student body, and curriculum, are these institutions sufficiently international? How are the funding institutions and universities in the West helping these fledgling universities? Are these trends expected to accelerate in the future? We attempt to answer these questions within the context of a few case studies that reflect the breadth and diversity of this revolutionary growth in post‐secondary higher education.     

Time series analysis of the nexus among corruption,political instability and judicial inefficiency in Pakistan

The purpose of this study is two folds: firstly, to analyze the direction of causality between corruption and political instability directly and secondly, to determine the causality between corruption and political instability indirectly through judicial inefficiency in Pakistan. The causality between corruption, political instability and judicial inefficiency is tested by applying Toda–Yamamoto Granger causality test. The results show that there is a lack of direct causal relationship between corruption and political instability. However, political instability and corruption cause each other indirectly through judicial inefficiency. The study highlights the critical role of judicial inefficiency leading to an important policy implication.     

The relevance of personal characteristics in health care rationing: what the Australian public thinks and why

This article examines the preferences of the general public in Australia regarding health care resource allocation. While previous studies have revealed that the public is willing to give priority to particular groups of patients based on their personal characteristics, the present article goes beyond previous efforts in attempting to explain these results. In the present study, there was strong support among respondents for giving “equal priority” to people regardless of their personal characteristics. However, respondents did reveal a preference for married patients over single, for children over adults, for carers of children and the elderly, sole breadwinners, and good community contributors. Further, they would give a lower priority to those perceived as “self-harmers”—smokers, individuals with unhealthy diets, and those who rarely exercise. Variation in the answers according to broad economic and social beliefs across seven different categories (“factors”) influenced the pattern of the public's attitudes towards rationing. The Principal Components Analysis (PCA) indicated that most of the items in our survey are associated with seven factors that explain or capture much of the variation. These relate to a patient's avoidance of self-harm behaviors (Safe Living), their Life Style (diet, exercise, etc.), their contribution to the community through caring for others (Caring), their talents (Gifted), their sexual behavior (Sexuality), their age and marital status (Family), and whether they are an Australian citizen or employed (Citizen). The strength of social preferences—e.g., how strongly respondents would “discriminate” against a recreational drug user or preference a person with a healthy diet—is related to the particular class of preferences.     

A theory of risk, smuggling and welfare

This paper argues that the existing models of smuggling do not provide a proper treatment of risk. The paper develops a smuggling model which is an application of James Tobin's celebrated risk analysis to the smuggling situation. The paper shows that a large number of existing key smuggling-related results are fundamentally modified. The paper then develops special cases using this properly specified risk model. These special cases help identify the assumptions one needs to obtain results in the existing smuggling literature. It is shown that the required assumptions for these results to hold are generally quite unrealistic.     

Impact at the ‘Bottom of the Pyramid’: The Role of Social Capital in Capability Development and Community Empowerment

Rooted in the notion of inclusive capitalism, the Bottom‐of‐the‐Pyramid (BoP) approach argues for the simultaneous pursuit of profit and social welfare by creating markets for the poor. This idea has been both celebrated and criticized in the literature. We do neither in this paper. Instead, by leveraging insights from Amartya Sen's work on capability development and the literature on social capital, we offer a more socially embedded and community‐centric BoP approach. By redefining poverty not just as a lack of income, but also as a lack of ‘capabilities’ in Sen's sense that can be developed through leveraging social capital, we offer a systemic framework for understanding the societal impact of business‐driven ventures in the BoP and empowering BoP communities through these ventures. Specifically, we argue that any business initiative in the BoP ought to be evaluated on the basis of whether it advances capability transfer and retention by (a) enhancing the social capital between a particular community and other more resource rich networks, and (b) preserving the existing social capital in the community.     

Purchasing power parity in ASEAN-5 countries: revisit with cross-sectional dependence and structural breaks

This paper re-examines the purchasing power parity (PPP) hypothesis for a panel of ASEAN-5 countries. The panel unit root and cointegration tests, which incorporate cross-sectional dependence and multiple structural breaks, are innovatively used for testing the PPP hypothesis. We could not find evidence that supports the existence of a long-run equilibrium between the relative price ratio and the nominal exchange rate for the whole period. Nevertheless, there is evidence of a cointegrating relationship for the post-crisis period. Our finding implies that a flexible exchange rate regime is suitable for the individual ASEAN countries.     

On solving bias‐corrected non‐linear estimation equations with an application to the dynamic linear model

In a seminal paper, Mak, Journal of the Royal Statistical Society B, 55, 1993, 945, derived an efficient algorithm for solving non‐linear unbiased estimation equations. In this paper, we show that when Mak's algorithm is applied to biased estimation equations, it results in the estimates that would come from solving a bias‐corrected estimation equation, making it a consistent estimator if regularity conditions hold. In addition, the properties that Mak established for his algorithm also apply in the case of biased estimation equations but for estimates from the bias‐corrected equations. The marginal likelihood estimator is obtained when the approach is applied to both maximum likelihood and least squares estimation of the covariance matrix parameters in the general linear regression model. The new approach results in two new estimators when applied to the profile and marginal likelihood functions for estimating the lagged dependent variable coefficient in the dynamic linear regression model. Monte Carlo simulation results show the new approach leads to a better estimator when applied to the standard profile likelihood. It is therefore recommended for situations in which standard estimators are known to be biased.     

Global water crisis and future food security in an era of climate change

Food policy should serve humanity by advancing the humane goals of eradicating extreme poverty and hunger. However, these goals have recently been challenged by emerging forces including climate change, water scarcity, the energy crisis as well as the credit crisis. This paper analyses the overall role of these forces and population growth in redefining global food security. Specifically, global water supply and demand as well as the linkages between water supply and food security are examined. The analysis reveals that the water for food security situation is intricate and might get daunting if no action is taken. Investments are needed today for enhancing future food security; this requires action on several fronts, including tackling climate change, preserving land and conserving water, reducing the energy footprint in food systems, developing and adopting climate resilient varieties, modernising irrigation infrastructure, shoring up domestic food supplies, reforming international food trade, and responding to other global challenges.     

Brand Power Relationships: A Co-Evolutionary Conceptual Framework

Abstract

In the era of the Internet and networking, stakeholders increasingly acquire power by influencing brand value and meanings. However, this does not imply that marketing managers have lost their power over brand creation and management. Thus, the aim of this study is to explore brand power relationships taking the co-evolutionary perspective as conceptual lenses. In particular, this article seeks to address the competitive relationship between the corporation and its stakeholders in determining the corporate brand evolution over time, suggesting that corporate brand management is successful when co-evolving power relationships are established. The relational interplay between managers and stakeholders is framed into the Brand Power Relationship Model that suggests four potential evolutionary paths. It offers new brand typologies supported by examples from business practices, which mirror four different ways of managing and adapting brands over time; namely, through the None’s Brand, the Managers’ Brand, the Stakeholders’ Brand, and the Co-Evolutionary Brand. Focusing on the latter, this study depicts managers and stakeholders as having reciprocal influences and co-determining themselves, thus triggering interrelated relational effects that influence corporate brand evolution over time. The bilateral power of managers and stakeholders is framed into a further model, focused on corporate brand co-evolution. It is proposed that corporate brands can successfully co-create their value and meanings over time only if corporations co-evolve with their environment—in this study, multiple external stakeholders.