Ethiopia’s Challenge to Egyptian Hegemony in the Nile River Basin: The Case of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam

Home to more than 160 million people, the Nile River Basin has become one of the hotspots of the global quest for food, water and energy security. Moving closer to its completion, the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) highlights the interplay between the food, water, and energy sectors and their implications on geopolitical power relations in the region. Despite Ethiopia having the highest volumetric contribution to the Nile river flow, Egypt has maintained hydro-hegemony over the basin for several decades on the basis of historical claims and colonial agreements. Egypt has stated that its volumetric share of the Nile’s water is not sufficient to sustain its growing population, declaring water availability a matter of national security. However, for Ethiopia, the GERD represents a crucial moment in its development agenda, acting as both a counterhegemonic power play, as well as a means to improving the hydropower capacity of the country, and ensuring future food security. This paper explores the various hegemonic and counter-hegemonic strategies employed by Egypt and Ethiopia respectively, highlighting the various ways in which food, water, and energy concerns are intrinsic components of the asymmetric power configurations of the Nile River Basin. By navigating the debate surrounding the GERD, this paper highlights the necessity of incorporating the food, water, and energy nexus into studies of hydro-hegemony and counter-hegemony. This allows the future policy direction for nexus management and governance in the Nile River Basin to move beyond benefit sharing, instead steering towards power sharing.     

Developing a model of antecedents to consumers' perceptions and evaluations of price unfairness

Drawing on previous research in pricing, we propose three broad antecedents to perceptions of price unfairness. Consumers perceive price unfairness when (1) they feel that the firm is making excessive profits, (2) they are not able to understand the pricing structure applied, and (3) they sense the firm is acting in an immoral or unethical manner. Survey data were collected from 969 consumers to understand their perceptions of price unfairness. In the survey, respondents were asked to provide their perceptions of pricing practices for fifteen products or services. A content analysis of consumers' comments confirms a wide array of drivers of price unfairness discussed by researchers and uncovers a few under-researched antecedents.     

Transformative service research and service design: synergistic effects in healthcare

ABSTRACT

This conceptual paper answers the question: How do we design service experiences in whole to increase the well-being of all participants in the healthcare system – patients, families, and caregivers? In order to do so, we position service design as an essential tool and even a mindset needed for transformative service research success. We discuss the transformative role service design plays in improving service and consumer entities’ well-being with a focus on how this approach can lead to improved healthcare service outcomes. We also add to the conversation surrounding service and consumer entities’ well-being by broadening the concept and application of service design to consider social, existential, psychological, and physical well-being. We particularly explore how healthcare services can benefit from further consumer engagement and collaborative patient–provider relationships, two key factors essential for redesigning the industry.     

Robust and stable flexible job shop scheduling with random machine breakdowns using a hybrid genetic algorithm

This paper addresses the problem of finding robust and stable solutions for the flexible job shop scheduling problem with random machine breakdowns. A number of bi-objective measures combining the robustness and stability of the predicted schedule are defined and compared while using the same rescheduling method. Consequently, a two-stage Hybrid Genetic Algorithm (HGA) is proposed to generate the predictive schedule. The first stage optimizes the primary objective, minimizing makespan in this work, where all the data is considered to be deterministic with no expected disruptions. The second stage optimizes the bi-objective function and integrates machines assignments and operations sequencing with the expected machine breakdown in the decoding space. An experimental study and Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) is conducted to study the effect of different proposed measures on the performance of the obtained results. Results indicate that different measures have different significant effects on the relative performance of the proposed method. Furthermore, the effectiveness of the current proposed method is compared against three other methods; two are taken from literature and the third is a combination of the former two methods.     

Reliability parameters estimation for parallel systems under imperfect repair

We consider in this paper a parallel system consisting of \(\eta \) identical components. Each component works independently of the others and has a Weibull distributed inter-failure time. When the system fails, we assume that the repair maintenance is imperfect according to the Arithmetic Reduction of Age models (\(ARA_{m}\)) proposed by Doyen and Gaudoin. The purpose of this paper is to generate a simulated failure data of the whole system in order to forecast the behavior of the failure process. Besides, we estimate the maintenance efficiency and the reliability parameters of an imperfect repair following \(ARA_{m}\) models using maximum likelihood estimation method. Our method is tested with several data sets available from related sources. The real data set corresponds to the time between failures of a compressor which is tested by Likelihood Ratio Test (LR). An analysis of the importance and the effect of the memory order of imperfect repair classes (\(ARA_{m}\)) will be discussed using LR test.     

A note on a noise process

Summary In this article we considered the system of stochastic differential equations …, wherex is a column vector of orderr, A is a square matrix of constant coefficients andε is a vector of random functions. The system is transformed to the corresponding system of the white noise process. A method of estimation of the elements of the matrixA has been introduced under certain conditions, the assurance of which has been also investigated.

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Zusammenfassung In diesem Artikel wird das System der stochastischen Differentialgleichungen … betrachtet, worinx ein Spaltenvektor der Ordnungr, A eine quadratische Matrize der konstanten Elemente undε ein Vektor der zuf?lligen Funktionen ist. Dieses System wird umgeformt zum korrespondierenden System des wei?en Rauschens. Eine Methode der Sch?tzung der Elemente der MatrizeA ist unter bestimmten Bedingungen eingeführt, deren Sicherheit auch untersucht wird.

     

On bank privatization: The case of Egypt

This paper discusses the controversy regarding the privatization of the banking sector in Egypt. It provides an overview of the structure and evolution of the banking system, in the context of the series of reform measures undertaken by the Egyptian authorities over the past decades. The paper assesses the performance of the state-owned banks versus private banks over the period 1995–2005. Microprudential indicators, such as capital adequacy, asset quality, earnings, and profitability, reveal that state-owned banks lag behind in terms of efficiency and performance, compared to their private counterparts. Results also suggest that retaining government ownership can adversely affect banks performance. The paper explores the factors hindering the smooth implementation of bank privatization. The authors indicate that the financial sector reform currently adopted is comprehensive; however it is confronted with various political, social, and economic risks, which raise concerns regarding its sustainability. The paper then draws on the existing literature to provide guidance to policy makers, regarding effective and successful implementation of bank privatization.     

Do Patented Innovations Reduce Stock Price Crash Risk?*

Using a large sample of US firms, we document a significantly negative relation between the number of patents (citations) and stock price crash risk. Our findings are consistent with the arguments that patented innovation activities send a high‐quality signal and reduces proprietary information costs, which lowers information asymmetry and enhance disclosure. Further, we find that such impact of patented innovation on stock price crash risk is more pronounced in firms with weak corporate governance and high information opacity. Our findings provide new evidence on the real effects of patented innovation on crash risk in equity market.