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Public Utilities (public + utility)
Selected AbstractsRegional development, nature production and the techno-bureaucratic shortcut: the Douro River catchment in PortugalENVIRONMENTAL POLICY AND GOVERNANCE, Issue 6 2008Antonio A. R. Ioris Abstract The introduction of the Water Framework Directive in Europe represents a unique opportunity to promote more inclusive strategies for the long-term preservation of (socionatural) water systems. However, the analysis of the Portuguese experience, using the River Douro as a case study, reveals still considerable shortcomings in the assessment of problems and the formulation of solutions. Instead of promoting a meaningful dialogue between social groups and spatial areas, there is a systematic attempt to conform to legal requisites by taking a ,techno-bureaucratic' shortcut that largely reproduces the distortions of previous regulatory approaches. Decisions on water management are part of political disputes about regional development and state reform, such as in relation to the provision of water and electricity by public utilities. Nonetheless, these broader issues have been kept tacitly away from the WFD agenda, which has been concentrated on adjusting established procedures to the (formal) requirements of the new regulation. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment. [source] Agricultural and Rural Development in China: Achievements and Challenges Entwicklung der Landwirtschaft und des ländlichen Raums in China: Erfolge und Herausforderungen Le développement agricole et rural en Chine : résultats et défisEUROCHOICES, Issue 2 2009Chen Xiaohua Summary Agricultural and Rural Development in China: Achievements and Challenges China has made great advances in its agricultural and rural development since the reforms and opening-up that began in 1978. It has not only fed its population of 1.3 billion, but has also contributed to international agricultural development and food security. Agricultural production registered great development, providing sufficient food and clothes for 21 per cent of the world's population with 9 per cent of the arable land. In the process farmers' living standards improved remarkably and rural public utilities and services were greatly enhanced. China is now in a key transition period of accelerating the transformation and modernisation of traditional agriculture and rural society. It is facing significant challenges. Agriculture is still one of the weakest industries in China and it is proving difficult to sustain increases in grain output and farmers' incomes. The problems of uneven development in rural areas have become increasingly prominent and the gap between urban and rural development is tending to widen. The Chinese government will respond strategically to these challenges and will firmly pursue the construction of a new efficient and sustainable socialist countryside, along the path of modernisation with Chinese characteristics. It will also make greater contributions to world agriculture and rural development. Les progrès de la Chine en termes de développement agricole et rural depuis le début des réformes et l'ouverture en 1978 ont été considérables. Non seulement le pays a nourrit une population de 1.3 millions d'habitants mais il a contribué au développement et à la sécurité alimentaire au niveau international. La production agricole a fortement augmenté et a fournit suffisamment de nourriture et de vêtements à 21 pour cent de la population du monde avec 9 pour cent des terres cultivables. Ce processus s'est accompagné d'une hausse considérable du niveau de vie des agriculteurs et d'une grande amélioration des services publics dans les zones rurales. La Chine est maintenant à un moment clé de sa période de transition, caractérisé par une accélération de la transformation et de la modernisation de l'agriculture et de la société rurale traditionnelles. Des défis importants se présentent à elle. L'agriculture reste une des industries chinoises les plus fragiles et il se révèle difficile de continuer à augmenter la production céréalière et les revenus des agriculteurs. Les problèmes d'inégalité de développement dans les zones rurales deviennent de plus en plus visibles et l'écart de développement entre les zones urbaines et les zones rurale tend à s'accroître. Les pouvoirs publics chinois vont apporter une réponse stratégique à ces défis et vont poursuivre fermement la construction d'une nouvelle campagne socialiste efficace et durable, en suivant une voie de modernisation typiquement chinoise. Ils vont aussi accroître les contributions de la Chine au développement agricole et rural mondial. Seit Beginn der Reformen und der Öffnungspolitik 1978 hat sich Chinas Landwirtschaft und ländlicher Raum enorm weiterentwickelt. China hat seitdem nicht nur seine 1.3 Milliarden Einwohner ernährt, sondern auch zur internationalen Agrarentwicklung und Ernährungssicherung beigetragen. Die Agrarproduktion wurde erheblich ausgeweitet und deckt nun 21 Prozent des weltweiten Bedarfs an Lebensmitteln und Kleidung bei gerade einmal 9 Prozent der Weltackerfläche. Dabei haben sich die Lebensbedingungen für die Landwirte sowie das Angebot an öffentlichen Einrichtungen und Dienstleistungen im ländlichen Raum deutlich verbessert. China durchläuft gerade eine wichtige Übergangsphase, in der sich der Wandel und die Modernisierung der traditionellen Landwirtschaft und der Landbevölkerung noch schneller vollziehen, und steht großen Herausforderungen gegenüber. Die Landwirtschaft ist nach wie vor einer der schwächsten Sektoren in China, und es erweist sich als schwierig, die Steigerungsraten bei der Getreideerzeugung und den Einkommen in der Landwirtschaft aufrecht zu erhalten. Die Probleme der ungleichmäßigen Entwicklung in ländlichen Gebieten werden immer offensichtlicher, und die Kluft zwischen städtischer und ländlicher Entwicklung droht sich auszuweiten. Die chinesische Regierung wird diesen Herausforderungen strategisch begegnen und , ganz im Sinne einer Modernisierung mit chinesischen Merkmalen , daran festhalten, einen neuen sozialistischen ländlichen Raum effizient und nachhaltig zu gestalten. Sie wird ebenfalls einen noch größeren Beitrag zur Weltlandwirtschaft und zur Entwicklung des ländlichen Raums leisten. [source] The Contributions of Stewart Myers to the Theory and Practice of Corporate Finance,JOURNAL OF APPLIED CORPORATE FINANCE, Issue 4 2008Franklin Allen In a 40-plus year career notable for path-breaking work on capital structure and innovations in capital budgeting and valuation, MIT finance professor Stewart Myers has had a remarkable influence on both the theory and practice of corporate finance. In this article, two of his former students, a colleague, and a co-author offer a brief survey of Professor Myers's accomplishments, along with an assessment of their relevance for the current financial environment. These contributions are seen as falling into three main categories: ,Work on "debt overhang" and the financial "pecking order" that not only provided plausible explanations for much corporate financing behavior, but can also be used to shed light on recent developments, including the reluctance of highly leveraged U.S. financial institutions to raise equity and the recent "mandatory" infusions of capital by the U.S. Treasury. ,Contributions to capital budgeting that complement and reinforce his research on capital structure. By providing a simple and intuitive way to capture the tax benefits of debt when capital structure changes over time, his adjusted present value (or APV) approach has not only become the standard in LBO and venture capital firms, but accomplishes in practice what theorists like M&M had urged finance practitioners to do some 30 years earlier: separate the real operating profitability of a company or project from the "second-order" effects of financing. And his real options valuation method, by recognizing the "option-like" character of many corporate assets, has provided not only a new way of valuing "growth" assets, but a method and, indeed, a language for bringing together the disciplines of corporate strategy and finance. ,Starting with work on estimating fair rates of return for public utilities, he has gone on to develop a cost-of-capital and capital allocation framework for insurance companies, as well as a persuasive explanation for why the rate-setting process for railroads in the U.S. and U.K. has created problems for those industries. [source] Nonlinear Pricing in General Equilibrium Models with Joint ProductionTHE JAPANESE ECONOMIC REVIEW, Issue 1 2001Kazuya Kamiya This paper considers general equilibrium models of public utilities which produce either public goods or private goods. In the models, cases of increasing returns are not a priori excluded. The products of the public utilities and their costs are allocated to the consumers according to a rule that is dependent on information communicated to the public utilities. We show that if the public utilities follow a nonlinear pricing rule, the equilibrium allocations are always Pareto-optimal. Moreover, the message space is of finite dimensions. JEL Classification Numbers: D51, D60, H41, H42. [source] Organization, Management and Delegation in the French Water IndustryANNALS OF PUBLIC AND COOPERATIVE ECONOMICS, Issue 4 2001Jihad C. Elnaboulsi The water industry is largely a natural monopoly. Water distribution and sewerage services are characterized by networks and its natural monopoly derives from the established local networks of drinking water and sewers: they are capital intensive with sunk costs and increasing returns to scale. In France, local communities have a local requirement of providing public services under optimum conditions in terms of techniques and cost-effectiveness, and subject to respect different kind of standards in terms of water quality and level of services. They are responsible for producing and distributing drinking water, and collecting and treating wastewater. Furthermore, the French water utilities are required to be financially self-sufficient. Rate-setting varies across regions and local territories due to a variety of organizational features of services and availability of water resources. The management of these local public services can be public or private: local governments have the right, by the constitution, to delegate water service management to private companies which operate under the oversight of local municipal authorities. Today, nearly 80 per cent of the French population receive private distributed water. Different reasons are responsible for the poor performance and low productivity of most French public water utilities: technical and operational, commercial and financial, human and institutional, and environmental. Thus, many water public utilities have looked for alternative ways to provide water and sanitation services more efficiently, to improve both operational and investment efficiency, and to attract private finance. The purpose of this paper is to present the French organizational system of providing drinking water services, and collecting and treating wastewater services: legal aspects, contracts of delegation, and competition. [source] Integrated river basin management in England and Wales: a policy perspectiveAQUATIC CONSERVATION: MARINE AND FRESHWATER ECOSYSTEMS, Issue 4 2002G. Mance Abstract 1.There is now an irresistible momentum for a truly integrated and strategic approach to river basin management. As a consequence, the framework within which individual organizations can carry out their roles and responsibilities in a co-ordinated and sustainable way can be determined. 2.Extreme events such as floods and droughts have severe social and economic consequences. ,Traditional' engineered responses, which take little account of fluvial processes and ecosystem functioning, often exacerbate these problems and can have severe adverse consequences on the environment. 3.Bringing together a range of scientific, technical and engineering disciplines to address catchment management has many advantages. Identifying and implementing innovative solutions that benefit local communities and the environment is the only sustainable way forward for river management. 4.Public understanding of risk assessment and management is vital to the success of an integrated approach. So too is a strategic dimension to inform the town and country planning system and major investment decisions by major utilities and public bodies responsible for water supply, pollution control and flood management. 5.There are major challenges ahead for public utilities, agencies and professional bodies in terms of attracting, retaining and blending together skilled scientific, engineering and technical specialists. These skills need to be complemented by the ability to convey sophisticated information in readily understood language. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source] Decision Making in a Standby Service System,DECISION SCIENCES, Issue 3 2000H. V. Ravinder A standby service option allows a firm to lower its risk of not having sufficient capacity to satisfy demand without investing in additional capacity. Standby service options currently exist in the natural gas, electric, and water utility industries. Firms seeking standby service are typically large industrial or institutional organizations that, due to unexpectedly high demand or interruptions in their own supply system, look to a public utility to supplement their requirements. Typically, the firm pays the utility a reservation fee based on a nominated volume and a consumption charge based on the volume actually taken. In this paper, a single-period model is developed and optimized with respect to the amount of standby capacity a firm should reserve. Expressions for the mean and variance of the supplier's aggregate standby demand distribution are developed. A procedure for computing the level of capacity needed to safely meet its standby obligations is presented. Numerical results suggest that the standby supplier can safely meet its standby demand with a capacity that is generally between 20 to 50% of the aggregate nominated volume. [source] Deregulation, Competitive Pressures and the Emergence of IntermodalismAUSTRALIAN JOURNAL OF PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION, Issue 3 2002Sophia Everett Deregulation has dramatically altered the face of Australian industry and associated services throughout the last decade or so. In the transport sector, in particular, changes have been significant and deregulation has led to pervasive changes in market structure, to the actual ownership of infrastructure and to a shift in strategic focus from a public utility to one of commercial viability and market orientation. Competitive pressures in the transport sector as a result of deregulation have meant that traditional public sector organisations such as railways and ports have been transformed. A major impact of these developments has been that transport operators, in an endeavour either to maintain or capture market share, have been forced to restructure and refocus and, in the face of growing competition, have been forced to reinvent themselves and move increasingly towards the provision of an integrated intermodal service. Rail operators are now no longer simple linehaul operators in container or bulk freight markets but have become market,focused third,party service providers of a range of integrated functions. [source] | ||||||||||