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The paper analyzes the linkages between the reform strategies in transition countries and economic performance. We focus on agriculture because of the sharpness of the policy changes, fundamental differences among countries, and relative simplicity of agricultural relationships. We document post reform performance in the transition countries of Asia and Europe. We show how: a.) pricing reform and subsidy reductions; b.) land rights reform and policies that affect farm restructuring; and c.) the presence institutions that facilitate exchange (either markets or market substitutes) affect output and productivity. The paper ends with general lessons on reforms and transition.

After surveying the facts and distilling the voluminous literature on the transition to market economies, the author arrives at several conclusions: with hindsight, the old debate - Big Bang versus gradualism - was really a problem of feasibility, although many of the arguments in favor of the Big Bang have now been proven right. Once more, inflation has been found to be incompatible with growth and the importance of a good microeconomic structure - especially an effective banking system - has been confirmed. The decline of the state in transition economies is both spectacular and puzzling - combining features that are both desirable and dangerous. Among useful lessons learned: 1) It has paid to start early and move fast. The Big Bang is highly desirable but impractical, and gradualism is unavoidable but ought to be compressed as much as possible. The countries that bit the bullet early and hard have done better over the past decade. 2) Stabilize first; growth next. Macroeconomic stabilization is a prerequisite for growth. The budget deficit need not be eliminated, but the link between deficits and money growth must be severed. 3) Structural reform is important, and microeconomic policies, often overlooked, should be started as soon as possible. This means establishing property rights, hardening budget constraints, building a healthy banking system, and ensuring true domestic competition. 4) The choice of an exchange rate regime, another early controversy, is apparently less important than adherence to a strict monetary policy. The floaters have tightly managed their exchange rates, while the fixers have repeatedly devalued and have often ended up floating. Some form of monetary targeting is needed, but it matters little which target is chosen so long as it is adhered to. 5) Creating irreversibilities early on allows governments to change without seriously affecting the transition. The less stable the economy, the more politics matters. A shaky economic basis is fertile ground for policy reversals that set the clock back several years (Bulgaria, Romania, Russia).

The
University of New Orleans has become the sick man of higher education in
Louisiana, providing a lesson of what happens when a school loses focus, faces shoddy
political governance around it, and suffers from poor state higher education
policy.

My alma
mater has received a string
of distressing news since the spring as it stares
down budget cuts of 15 percent on the academic side and 25 percent on the
athletics side. This is in response to a projected $15 million budget
deficit for the upcoming year. The symptom of all this is declining enrollment
that has plunged nearly 62 percent over the past two decades, going
from the second-largest campus in the state in enrollment now to the
tenth-highest and in the bottom half of senior institutions.

There are
reasons for this, and they don't reflect well on higher education and UNO
leadership, state policy-makers, and governance particularly of New Orleans and
to a lesser extent its surrounding areas. Starting at the top with the broadest
big picture, policy-makers set up failure by their steadfast refusal to pare
the state's overbuilt system of higher education. When the realization came
some three decades ago it was top heavy, partial corrections were made by
building up the bottom with community and technical colleges, but the top itself
wasn't reduced (in fact, it was made even bigger with the addition of Louisiana
State University of Alexandria as a senior institution).

Since the
fall of 2023, the total number of students in state higher education hardly has
risen, just a few thousand to 217,614 or 1.44 percent. Yet despite a push to
place associate degree programs and emphasis on trades into community and
technical colleges, their proportion of students in the system rose only from
just under a quarter to just over a quarter. Fanciful
plans to boost degree completion from the current (academic year 2024 that
ended last month) 55,284 to 85,000 in six years, which could take up overbuilt slack,
are a pipe dream.

Failure to
consolidate some senior institutions and demote others leave inefficiency that
harms almost all of the state's schools except for the flagship Louisiana State
University in Baton Rouge that gets the pick of everything. UNO is one of the
most direct victims of this, because its main campus sits little more than a
mile from the main campus of another public senior institution, Southern University
at New Orleans. SUNO as well has seen suffering, with its enrollment down 41
percent over the past two decades, and it would make perfect sense to merge the
two.

As SUNO is
a regional school and UNO a statewide with higher admission standards, the SUNO
campus could be repurposed as a branch of Delgado Community College to accommodate
those who might have attended SUNO that couldn't qualify to enter UNO. SUNO faculty
members largely would be retained there or at UNO, and millions of dollars
annually could be saved in reducing duplicative bureaucracy. But politics
got in the way of this precise solution some 13 years ago especially from
black Democrat legislators who would see the pouring of SUNO into UNO – which still
would leave UNO at about half of its enrollment 20 years ago – as taking away
one of "their" universities from the only historically black university system
in the country.

A
mega-merger like that would be good for all concerned, as Delgado as well has
suffered an enrollment dip, of 28 percent over the past two decades. Which
points to a problem exogenous to organization of higher education: policy at
both the state and local level that has depleted the pool of potential
students. While it's fashionable among academia and the political left to denigrate
the Republican Gov. Bobby Jindal era insofar as higher education with a myth of
"defunding" Louisiana higher education, in fact there was little change in
overall spending, just a rebalancing from a system that heavy penalized
taxpayers while asking relatively little of users to one where the two major
sources of revenue for higher education evened out.

In fact,
in proportional terms the greatest five-year expansion of the student
population occurred during Jindal's time, five percent between AY 2009-14. That
almost reversed entirely in AY 2014-19, when Democrat Gov. John Bel Edwards
took over, with about half regained from AY 2019-24. The reason why were population
changes statewide, where in calendar year 2009-14 it increased 3.38
percent, in CY 2014-19 it advanced a miniscule 0.1 percent, and with Edwards's impact
fully on display fell 1.61 percent in CY 2019-23. Simply, with a governor more interested
in pumping up government to confiscate more wealth to redistribute than in aiding
citizens in wealth creation, whose policies to do that Republican-led Legislatures
insufficiently resisted, the number of jobs retrenched, wages lagged inflation,
and people up and left the state.

That
impeded efforts to boost college enrollment statewide, but the effect particularly
was felt among the three New Orleans public institutions. Understandably, they took
big hits after the hurricane disaster of 2005, but recovery never has been
complete. Delgado saw a nice recovery in AY 2009-14, but then plunged downwards
thereafter. SUNO stabilized then dropped, and UNO shed students in every five-year
period. Without the losses at these three, the rest of the state's enrollment
would have been up not just over 3,000 in the past two decades, but more like
20,000.

This is
because the three are substantially commuter schools serving the greater New
Orleans area – and that metropolitan statistical area has seen a significant population
decline in that period. Keep in mind this not only includes Orleans Parish, but
several others (and for 2023-24 analysis purposes, the new Slidell-St.
Tammany-Covington MSA that was split off). Over that time span, population has
dropped 5.9 percent even as the state eked out a 1.8 percent gain. Area
governance, particularly the increasingly woke direction of New Orleans around
which the area revolves, has to stand as the explanation buck the trend.

Still, the
particular plunges in enrollments far exceed the diminishment of the primary market.
Some of this has to do with larger declining enrollment trends in academia related
to the precipitous
drop in confidence in higher education in the American public, likely due
to the increased alienation academia triggers as collectively it ever rushes
away from educating a free society in critical thinking ability towards promoting
inchoate faddishness and social change based upon a warped understanding of the
human condition. More and more families don't see throwing away gobs of money
on a product that doesn't teach rigorous analysis and thinking for oneself,
when entering the workforce or on-the-job technical training nets for the
capable a good salary in a world increasingly dependent upon skills in acquiring
and evaluating information that can be picked up outside of academia.

But among
the three New Orleans schools, the one in fiscal crisis and whose enrollment
never came close to recovering has been UNO. Its revenues
from tuition and fees remained fairly stable in the $55 to $60 million range
for many years, but in recent years the bottom dropped out, falling to $34
million in AY 2024. Coupled with reduced taxpayer support after a few years of
dramatically higher amounts after the hurricane disaster of 2005, its deficits
before extraordinary items and capital outlay, which by AY 2019 had fallen to
just over $1 million, by AY 2024 had ballooned back out to over $5 million, and
after a string of years prior to AY 2019 in the neighborhood of $15 million and
as high as $35 million in AY 2009. Even at this reduced level, the looming
shortfall it puts the university in financial trouble because the reserve well
has run dry.

Prompting
this has to include faulty governance that lost focus. Perhaps the example of
one bad decision best explains why. As woke craziness began busting out of
academia and into the public consciousness, UNO
decided to start up, and award a doctorate in, "Justice Studies," an academically
suspect enterprise that more promotes political advocacy than genuine scholarship
and learning. If this is indicative of the decision-making of UNO administrators
in the past 20 years – throwing away money on this drivel instead of shuttling
towards strengthening bread-and-butter general education requirement teaching, or
in recruiting, or in retention, etc. – no wonder it has fallen into such a
sorry state.

Not that
the current leadership inspires much confidence that it can reverse the slide
the chancellors since Gregrory O'Brien had ridden down. Current Chancellor
Kathy Johnson, who declared UNO needed to become more relevant to the population,
in her previous position couldn't
have acted more in opposition to that by seeming more interested in righting
bogus wrongs that allegedly prevent "inclusion" and "equity" of women and racial
minority members in academic fields covering the sciences, technology, engineering,
and math.

In short,
in an overbuilt academic environment that will punish a school vulnerable to forces
creating weak enrollment, caused by societal trends and recent past policy (as
well as a history of liberal populism) both statewide and nearby, and an indifference
to pursuing a genuine academic mission, will land a school in big trouble. UNO
has found itself caught in this vortex, with no easy and/or quick solutions
ahead.

Samuel Munzele Maimbo and Dilip Ratha (eds). Remittances: Development Impact and Future Prospects. Washington, D. C.: The World Bank, 2005. xxii+378 pages. Paperback. US$ 30.00. Remittances play a crucial role in the development of a country. Whereas workers remit money through banking channels or hundi, the benefit to the nation is maximised if they are remitted through normal banking channels. Therefore, there is a need to find out new technologies to remove unwarranted constraints such as costly fees and commissions, inconvenient banking hours, and insufficient banking services in the foreign countries. This book is the first comprehensive study on remittances of overseas workers and demonstrates that the developing countries have recognised the importance of remittance flows and are working towards gradual removal of the constraints. It identifies the key challenges faced by the development communities and developing country governments in harnessing the benefit of remittance flows. A timely addition to the economic literature in converting the World Bank's vision of 'world free of poverty' into a reality, it is a collection of articles on the issues, trends, and determinants, to maximise the development impact, strengthen the formal financial infrastructure, increase transparency in the informal financial infrastructure and migration, and develop further prospects of remittances. Although remittances complement the efforts by governments in enhancing the development process, yet they are neither panacea to development issues nor a substitute for sustained assistance. It would be difficult to imagine progress on the remittance agenda without progress on financial sector reforms, corporate governance, anti-corruption efforts, and other related issues.
Blanca Moreno-Dodson (ed). Reducing Poverty on a Global Scale: Learning and Innovating for Development. Washington, D. C.: The World Bank, 2005. xvii +267 pages. Paperback. US$ 35.00. This book deals with some common themes on scaling up poverty reduction explored in the findings of the Shanghai Global Learning Initiatives, a meeting held in Shanghai in 2004. The objective is to scale up global poverty reduction to the existing knowledge on poverty reduction and the effectiveness of aid. Scaling up requires time, management, continuous adaptation of programmes, policies, and practices to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) by setting strategic targets and actions to empower the poor people to become active participants in moving out of poverty. In scaling up global poverty reduction, the participatory approach is of great importance, as poor people themselves know more about poverty than the others. The book provides insight to development practitioners about observed achievements in reducing poverty and the factors influencing it. Each chapter of the book highlights lessons from the case studies based on different poverty dimensions, focusing on such implementation factors as the role of commitment and leadership, institutional innovations, learning and experimentation, and external catalysts. The book provides a detailed framework for analysis, observation at country level, development as a process of learning and innovation, thematic analysis, lessons on community-driven development, learning scaling up through evaluation, operational implications, and issues for further research.
Ruth Alsop (ed). Power, Rights, and Poverty: Concepts and Connections. Washington, D. C.: The World Bank, 2005. viii+157 pages. Paperback. US$ 20.00. The concept of power, rights, and poverty as presented in a two-day seminar organised jointly by the World Bank and the United Kingdom Department for International Development in March 2004 is discussed in detail in this book. The first part of the book addresses the competing definitions and concepts of power and rights, focusing on observations and applications of these concepts in different countries. It is aimed at helping development practitioners, so that they apply these concepts to their work. The second part deals with supplementary material concerning theoretical conceptualisation of the definition of the power and overviews the literature on power and rights. The book provides a combination of relationship between theory and practice on the issues of power, empowerment, and human rights. Empowerment is crucial for development effectiveness, good governance, and growth. It enables citizens to claim their positions as equal members of the society having positive impacts on their lives and is a right-based approach to development based on justice and equity. The PRSP model tries to increase accountability and transparency and enhances rights—and empowers approaches to development instead of human rights approaches that focuses on the legal obligations and duties of state to individuals. The studies in this book project the World Bank's agenda to empower poor people. The comprehensive literature review presented in the last chapter is very useful.
Emiliana Vegas (ed). Incentives to Improve Teaching: Lessons from Latin America. Washington, D. C.: The World Bank, 2005. xiv+435 pages. Paperback. US$ 35.00. Education is defined as one of the most crucial means to fighting against poverty and inequality and to attain the development of a country. The book emphasises challenges in improving education in Latin America. The role of improving education faces challenges; implementing effective incentives in methodological approaches using the best available data is one of them. And teachers certainly play an important role in enhancing student learning. They do respond to incentives that vary in nature and consequently they enter and remain in teaching and/or leave that profession. The teaching quality depends on the expected enhanced incomes of the teachers, or the better performance of the students in the tests. Empirical evidence shows that clarity in behaviour influences the effectiveness of teacher incentive reforms. Factors other than the teacher's compensations, like classroom atmosphere and school-based management reforms, also have a great impact on teaching quality and student learning. The book focuses on the impact of education reforms that affect the teaching quality by raising teacher's accountability in response to the increased incentives for raising student learning. Therefore, it should be of great interest to government officials, NGOs, research institutions, and universities.
Anwar Shah (ed). Fiscal Management. Washington, D. C.: The World Bank, 2005. xxxiv+254 pages. Paperback. US$ 35.00. Sound fiscal management helps determine the course of economic development, as well as social equality for the poor, and other disadvantaged groups. Developing countries mostly suffer due to unsatisfactory governance systems in allocation of resources, revenue systems, and delivery of vital public sector services. The book analyses the issues of fiscal prudence, fiscal stress, bureaucratic inefficiency, citizen empowerment, and public integrity. It addresses in detail the government's fiscal health including political economy of the budget, performance- based budgeting, revenue performance, and debt management. It proposes measures to assess the net worth of the system, fiscal risks, civil services reforms, and the institutions of accountability. The idea is to enable the policy-makers and the practitioners to diagnose institutional weaknesses and the methods to overcome these constraining factors.
Anthony G. Bigio and Bharat Dahiya. Urban Environment and Infrastructure: Towards Livable Cities. Washington, D. C.: The World Bank, 2004. xxi+149 pages. Paperback. US$ 25.00. Cities are the engine of growth in developing countries and absorb increasing proportions of the national population. The urban population grows fast and impacts water resources and the agricultural population in the region. Therefore, there is a great need to improve the quality and livability of the urban environment. This book is the first major outcome of the urban environment thematic group and reviews the World Bank's commitment to improve the urban environment quality, based on the 'expanded brown agenda' that covers protecting and enhancing environmental health in the urban areas, saving water, soil, and air quality from contamination and pollution, and minimising the urban impact on natural resources at the regional and global scales, thus preventing and mitigating the urban impact of natural disasters and climate change. The World Bank usually provides necessary funds for the projects for improvement of water and sanitation facilities, urban development programmes, environmental conditions, energy crises and the transport sector, with a view to providing better facilities to the urban poor. This book is a combination of empirical analysis, case studies, and consultations. It assesses World Bank's funding for such urban environment facilities and also identifies the gaps in the relevant projects.
United Nations. China in a Globalizing World. Washington, D. C.: United Nations, 2005. xiii+183 pages. Paperback. US$ 20.00. China is a fast-growing economy in our globalising world, and its robust economic growth has reduced poverty and achieved the United Nations Millennium Development Goal of halving world poverty much before the target date of 2015, at least for its own people. This book is a collection of presentations made at various seminars organised by UNCTAD and the Ministry of Commerce of China with the participation of Asian Development Bank Institute. Much useful information is provided on the spectacular growth of China since the mid-1990s, its globalisation and integration into the world economy, and its links to its neighbours as partners or competitors for trade and investment. The academics and policy-makers in the world are examining the "China Phenomenon" and its impact on world economies for achieving the sustained economic development in their respective economies. The China model differs from the previous development models, and perhaps can be followed in both the developing and the developed countries to attain rapid growth. Particularly interesting is the information about rapid growth together with achievement of welfare benefits for the general population, and about bridging the gap between China and the rest of the world within the shortest possible time.

Maritime piracy is still one of the most interesting manifestations of human activity by reason of the fact that it has, directly or indirectly, a number of points of contact between different problems of social, religious, political, economical and, of course, historical matter. Specifically, South-east Asia is a great example of how history, politics and religion are strongly and crucially imbued with the maritime banditry phenomenology. During the era of great maritime political entities exercising dominion along the Malay and Indonesian coasts, predation assumed character of endemicity going to fit firmly within the society, politics and economy networks. Inside Zhu Pan Zhi, the reports of the Song Dynasty about the barbarian peoples, is it possible to read about the piracy in the Great Southern Ocean (Nanyang) «the foreign ships were often attacked by pirates. The captives were the favourite of pirates, one captive can sell for 2 liang or 3 liang gold, the piracy prevents the merchants from visiting the ports» . Of great interest it is also the description of piracy in waters near Singapore (Temasek) and south of the straits that, in 1349, appeared in these terms: «The Dragon-teeth Strait (longyamen) is between the two hills of Temasek barbarians, which look like dragon's teeth'. Through the centre runs a waterway. The fields are barren and rice harvest is poor. The climate is hot with heavy rain in April and May. The inhabitants are addicted to piracy […] when junks sail to the European Ocean (Indian Ocean), the local barbarians allow them to pass unmolested, but when the junks reach the Auspicious Strait (Jilimen) on their return voyages, some 200-300 pirate prahus (boats) will put out to attack the junks for several days, the crew of junks have to fight with their arms and setting up cloth screen as a protection against arrows. Sometimes, the junks are fortunate enough to escape with a favouring wind; otherwise, the crews are butchered and the merchandise becomes pirates' booty» . As can be seen from the text, also the physical elements (water, poor soil, distress sea routes, monsoon climate) play an important role in explaining the aforementioned endemicity of pirate phenomenon: in one of the most relevant work by Anthony Reid, a supporter of the Braudelian method of historical investigation, it is reported that few major areas of the world have been so deeply marked by nature such as South-east Asia, going to emphasize the importance of geography in the study of human activities. During the first part of my research, a question to which I have tried to answer was to understand the extent to which individuals, who are placed in a given geographical and historical context, act in a manner consistent with that particular geo-cultural system and how, external elements in that system, can help to change the perspective of action; in essence, I have tried to study how and to what extent India, China and Europe (Western Culture) have affected the history of the indigenous population of South-east Asia and the Straits of Malacca and Singapore in particular. The constitution of the great European colonial empires stretched from the Malacca Straits to the South China Sea, marked the beginning of a progressive modification process of maritime piracy both in terms of objectives to be achieved and also procedures to be followed; Nicholas Tarling lucidly points out in this regard "the old empires decayed, but were not replaced, and with their boundaries marauding communities appared, led by the adveturous Sharifs, or deprived aristocracies, or hungry chiefs" . The main ethnic groups who practiced piracy, the Riau-Lingga Malay, Bugis and Dayak of East Malaysia and Brunei, and Ilanun Balangingi from the southern Philippines and the Sulu sea, became corsairs in the pay of the colonial authorities and all those princes or sultans deprived of their possessions. However, alongside the politically motivated piracy, continued to resist a kind of maritime banditry conducted by fishing associations, outcasts or Chinese immigrants and so-called nomads people of the sea (Orang Laut), clanic and personalistic in nature whose cultural substrate was made up of bonds of friendship, kinship and blood. The remarkable fact is that the two types of piracy are not mutually exclusive but, on the contrary, represented the two faces of a coin and it was not unusual for pirates and corsairs to exchange roles when political or economic contingencies were changed. Interesting in this regard it was been the reading and examination of archival documents found at the National Archives in London (The National Archives) showing exchanges of correspondence and minute of some of the leading authorities of the British Straits Settlements between the first and second half of the nineteenth century. A set of letters that, given its enormous historical and political significance I decided to bring entirely, contains the correspondence (1863-67) between the Straits Settlements Governor Orfeur Cavenagh, Abu Bakar ibn Temenggong Daing Ibrahim Temenggong of Johor and Inche Wan Ahmed, exiled prince of Pahang become rebellious and pirate. Proceeding with the analysis of the phenomenon and given the interest of the international community for the sea routes passing into the Straits of Malacca and Singapore, the next questions concerned what was the real impact of piracy on maritime trade, what costs in human and social terms it produced, which law enforcement measures riparian states and foreign countries (in colonial and post-colonial age) have come into force; in addition to these I had tried to understand who is the pirate, what are the main reasons for his actions, what is the connection, if does exist, between piracy, terrorism and organized crime. In this direction, starting from the definitions of piracy given by the International Maritime Organization and the International Maritime Bureau, I examined most of the international conventions and regional agreements in which the issue of maritime security and cooperation between states and supranational bodies is addressed, placing special attention to the rules and clauses contained in the treaties able to activate those mechanisms for cooperation and burden sharing (burden-sharing) indispensable to the solution or, more realistically, the containment of the problem. Of great relevance to this line of analysis it has proved useful the socio-anthropological approach by Carolin Liss on the links between maritime banditry, criminal syndicates and terrorist groups (criminal syndicate) and the statistical and methodological approach by Karsten von Hoesslin focused on quantity, quality and type of assaults committed at sea. Concluded the second part of the thesis, I went to compare what is written in both historical and contemporary perspective to understand what kind of conclusion emerged from the results of my research; I asked myself, therefore, a further question: taking as a fixed point the thought of Braudel and Reid, following the method of analysis of Liss and Hoesslin, examine the archival documents and translations of ancient texts on the subject (the Sejarah Melayu and Suma Oriental of Tome Pires), given the availability (more or less declared) from South-east Asian newly established states (post-independence) to cooperation and given the interest of third actors in the straits, is it conceivable and correct to sustain now, in the first half of the new millennium, the possibility of a modification of the ancient customs and traditions and entrenched rivalry between neighboring countries on the basis of a new collective consciousness directed to a harmonious resolution, conveyed by a general law, of the phenomenon of maritime piracy? Or are we facing with a false hub of history, with a point that falsely or inappropriately is considered the turnaround from a tradition that has its roots in the coastal kingdoms of the sixth century and which is the sub-cultural layer of those population who have made the sea their source of wealth and power? To say it once again with Braudel, has the longue durée history undergone a change of route or will it repeat and renew her cycle again and again, sweetened by new technological tools and new forms of politics and economics? And if a change is in place, why now and how does it happen? Will history repeat itself? To give an answer, as thoroughly as possible, to this question I tried to define some of those steps that the countries of ASEAN should follow in order to effectively combat maritime piracy, terrorism widespread locally and organized crime; what could be the milestones in the process of construction of a shared legal system able to provide answers to many of the legal issues including the lack of a common legislation on maritime security. The watchword in the near future will have to be 'mutual legal assistance' in view of the implementation, in national legal corpora, of all those rules necessary to give effect to the directions contained in international conventions. Eventually, I propose a different and further reading of all those theories that track in failure or in the great inefficiency of coordinating policies in the field of maritime safety, the proliferation of piracy. Though I substantially agree with some of those interpretations, two points are critical and deserves attention: the lack of a proper historical and historiographical perspective of analysis and what I have called the axiom of the ultimate solution.

This paper empirically explores the political-economic determinants of why governments choose to tax or subsidize trade in agriculture. The authors use a new data set on nominal rates of assistance (NRA) across a number of commodities spanning the last five decades for 64 countries. NRAs measure the effect on domestic (relative to world) price of the quantitative and price-based instruments used to regulate agricultural markets. The data set admits consideration of both taxes and subsidies on exports and imports. The authors find that both economic and political variables play important roles in determining the within-variation in the NRA data. Based on results the authors offer a number of data-driven exploratory hypotheses that can inform future theoretical and empirical research on why governments choose to tax or subsidize agricultural products an important policy question that is also one of the least understood by scholars.

The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of the literature on the political economy of policy instrument choice and relate it to the experiences in agriculture. The paper is therefore organized as follows. The second section provides a ranking of policies as to their transfer efficiency and determines the standard of evaluation, given that no policy is perfect in achieving its goals. The third section explores why political competition does not ensure that an efficient policy instrument is chosen. The following two sections explain the two key theories: enforcement and commitment problems in section four, and information and agency problems in section five. Section six presents the important Grossman-Helpman model of inefficient policy choice that falls outside these two general theories. Section seven describes how policy instrument choice in agriculture is often a discrete outcome in response to a crisis and therefore becomes path dependent, resulting in a status quo bias. Section eight describes how trade agreements can affect policy instrument choice. The final section gives some guidance as to the outstanding issues.

After decades of high trade restrictions, fiscal distortions, and currency overvaluation, Cameroon implemented important commercial and fiscal policy reforms in 1994. Almost simultaneously, a major devaluation cut the international price of Cameroon's currency in half. This article examines the effects of those reforms on the incentive structure faced by manufacturing firms. Did the reforms create a coherent new set of signals? Did they reduce dispersion in tax burdens? Was the net effect to stimulate the production of tradable goods? The results of applying a cost function decomposition to detailed firm-level panel data suggest that the reforms created clear new signals for manufacturers, as effective protection rates fell by 80 to 120 percentage points. In contrast, neither the tax reforms nor the devaluation had a major systematic effect on profit margins. The devaluation did shift relative prices dramatically in favor of exportable goods, causing exporters to grow relatively rapidly.

   Josep M. Colomer: "The polarization in
the United States is foundational" 

INTERVIEW

The professor of Political Science at Georgetown University
analyzes the constitutional origin of polarization in the United States in his
latest book

JAVIER DE LA
SOTILLAWASHINGTON

LA VANGUARDIA 07/28/2024

Josep M. Colomer is a professor of Political Science at
Georgetown University in Washington. Prince of Asturias Professor since 2010,
he has taught at numerous institutions, including the Universitat Autònoma de
Barcelona, ​​the
Universitat Pompeu Fabra, New York University and SciencesPo, and has given
more than 100 lectures in 25 countries. He is an associate researcher at the
Institute of Political and Social Sciences of Barcelona and the author of 18
books, in which he has focused on the design of strategies for the
establishment and change of democratic institutions.

In his latest book, Constitutional
Polarization (Routledge), he investigates the constitutional origin of the
division that dominates the political life of the country, which has been
increasing in the last decade, and proposes solutions within the constitutional
framework. He welcomes us to Georgetown, in the midst of one of the tensest and
most polarized presidential campaigns of this century. Especially after the
assassination attempt against Donald Trump and the resignation of Joe Biden,
who has passed the baton to his vice president, Kamala Harris.

The candidates frame these elections as a plebiscite on
democracy. Is this what the US is playing for in November?

If Donald Trump meets the expectations of his Project 2025,
and based on what he began to do when he was president, it can certainly pose a
great risk. But this country is strong, the society is strong, and its
democracy will endure. I think the real threat to democracy, throughout the
West, is the great loss of prestige of governments, which do not meet
expectations and generate disaffection. People no longer vote in favor of
proposals but against the government in power: we have seen this in recent
elections in France, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Brazil or Argentina.
In the US, it has been clearly seen in recent years: we were used to the
president repeating his term, but this was not the case with Trump, and it will
not be the case with Biden either.

There is a climate of growing polarization in politics,
which threatens the democratic process. But the central thesis of your book is
that this is not an exception...

Not at all: it is foundational and
goes back to the US Constitution itself. In this country, it is the
institutions that produce the polarization of citizens, and not the other way
around. The system of separation of powers between the presidency and Congress,
often in conflict, and the existence of only two parties with the possibility
of reaching power, infects citizens. There has always been polarization, but
what we see now is negative polarization. Politicians campaign by attacking
their opponents and, instead of being proactive, they focus on the issues they
believe the other has not been able to solve.

That is why Trump focuses on
immigration, which has increased during Biden's term and, when an agreement was
reached between Republicans and Democrats in Congress, he ordered his
legislators to boycott it so he could continue to blame the Democrats. And
Harris has started very strongly with abortion, stoking fears that a Republican
government will make a law to prohibit it throughout the country. And that is
negative campaigning because when the Democrats had a majority in both chambers
they did not make any federal law to protect it. 

"The real threat to democracy is the
discredit of governments" 

Why do we no longer see the great consensus that
characterized the 20th century?

Because of the absence of a great
external enemy: that is what has historically generated national unity. During
the Great Depression, World War II and the Cold War, we had a period of some
internal peace and collaboration between the two parties. But when the Soviet
Union fell, in the absence of a common cause, the internal political agenda
resurfaced, with many issues that have never been resolved. This happens
because the system is inefficient: if one party wins the presidency and the
other the Congress, in the absence of consensus, the blockage is constant and
causes conflicts to stagnate.

Trump's arrival in politics eight years ago did not help
to unite the country either...

It deepened polarization. Trump's
project is, basically, to isolate and close the US: limit immigration, import
tariffs, disengage from NATO... That is the perfect recipe for internal
conflict. If he abandons foreign policy, he gives space to domestic problems,
such as race issues, women's rights, health care, education... Physics defines
it as entropy: closure to the outside and internal disorder always go together.

How can the country get back on the path of consensus and
big deals? Can the rise of China be a catalyst?

If Trump loses, the Republican
Party will have to reinvent itself. And then it will have to decide whether it
wants to continue in isolationism, a Cold War against Russia or against China,
or against both at the same time, or whether it wants to seek international
cooperation agreements that allow them to not be so obsessed and polarized by domestic
conflicts.

But there are many other ways to
mitigate polarization without having to amend the Constitution, which at this
point is unthinkable. One is to improve the relationship between Congress and
the presidency, through the figure of the vice president, who, by presiding
over the Senate, can act as a bridge and does not do so today. Another is to
give more powers to the states, because these issues of national polarization
are actually less divisive in each state, where there is more cultural and
social consensus.

"Congress' inefficiency in
legislating has created a monarchical temptation, with which the president has
been gaining power" 

When Biden explained his withdrawal, he said that George
Washington "taught us that presidents are not kings." However, as you explain
in the book, the United States was founded on a monarchical system. Where did
the founding fathers go wrong?

The drafters of the Constitution
paid the price of a novelty experiment. There was no country with a liberal
democratic constitution and they took as a reference the interpretation that
Baron de Montesquieu had made of the United Kingdom system. But there was a
problem: Montesquieu did not speak English, and he misinterpreted the British
system as an absolutist monarchy, in which the separation of powers was between
the king, the nobility and the people, whose authority came from separate
sources. However, at that time, the United Kingdom was already a parliamentary
monarchy, and the separation of powers was not such. The Founding Fathers took
that interpretation and brought it to the American system, where the powers of
the executive, the legislative and the judicial branches do not emanate from
the same support, which prevents them from collaborating on many important
issues. The difficulty of passing laws has made it a permanent temptation to
give more powers to the president, so he has become a kind of king: by its very
constitution, the country has a monarchical temptation. In the history of the
United States, there are many more executive orders (or presidential decrees)
than laws passed in Congress. For several decades, there has been more than one
executive order per week, and far fewer laws. That monarchical temptation is
seen in the electoral campaign: two characters face each other who seem to have
to solve everything.

Historically, legislators have put the interest of their
district or state before that of the party. However, it seems that now Congress
is governed by partisan lines. How did we get to this point?

That was the original idea: in his
farewell address, Washington warned against the danger of parties and
partisanship. And for the first 30 years, elections worked that way. But when
the founding fathers disappeared, they realized that the electoral system
itself favored the existence of national parties, each with a set of ideas that
were opposed to the other. This resulted in great tension, where physical
violence was common in Congress, and culminated in a civil war; but we are far
from that moment now.

In reality, the party system only
works at the national level when there are presidential elections, where there
are necessarily two clearly opposed candidates, which is reflected throughout
the country. Most of the time, each party in each state contains very diverse
positions. You see it in Congress, where there are clearly four currents
compressed into two parties: the nationalist populists of Make America Great
Again, the traditional conservatives, the liberal Democrats, and the socialist
Democrats. However, the institutional system does not allow them to act as such
and they have to meet in order to win, which causes voting along partisan
lines.

Given the dysfunctionality of Congress, the president has
been gaining powers. But what about the Supreme Court? In the ruling on Trump's
immunity, Judge Sonia Sotomayor insisted on the idea that the country should
not have kings...

I think that the Supreme Court
maintains its capacity to be a countervailing power. In fact, in the ruling on
immunity, what it did was return the case to a lower court to clarify whether
the assault on the Capitol was an official or private activity. But, if it is
determined that it is private, Trump still does not have immunity. Although
there is a conservative majority of six judges to three, in reality this
division occurs in less than one-third of the cases: according to the balance
of the last period, there are many more rulings by unanimity or mixed majorities
than polarized ones.

Thus, although the Supreme Court
has lost popularity (it is at 40% approval), especially after its decision on
abortion, it remains a stronger counter-power than Congress (with 13% support),
precisely because it has taken charge with its jurisprudence of filling the
void of the legislature, which does not legislate. The Supreme Court was the
one that confirmed Obama's universal and mandatory health care reform, rejected
Trump's veto on immigrants from Muslim-majority countries, ended his isolation
of children who crossed borders and were put in cages, and accepted gay
marriage, for which there is no law. The Supreme Court has been giving and
taking away freedoms, because Congress is incapable of legislating on that, and
it is the only effective counter-power to the president.

============================ Campaign in the US: We haven't seen anything yetThe last three weeks have brought so many surprises in
American politics that one can imagine how many more there could be until the
election.   Joe Biden appeared senile and paralyzed in the debate with
Donald Trump that he had requested and for which he had set the rules; to
correct the result, he had an interview on the ABC channel that was broadcast
on tape and still made the diagnosis worse. Previously, he had attended the G-7
meeting in Italy, in which he disappeared for a whole day and did not appear at
the gala dinner offered by the President of the Republic; and later, at the
NATO summit in Washington, he confused Harris with Trump and Zelensky with
Putin. Subsequently, he proved to be a good teleprompter reader, but unable to
hold a conversation for more than a few minutes.Meanwhile, the Supreme Court has
diverted the decision on Trump's immunity in private matters to a lower court;
the process about his appropriation of secret documents has been temporarily
suspended; and the sentence of the conviction for paying the silence of the
porn adultery has been deferred. After all this, he was almost murdered, by two
centimeters, at a rally, and proclaimed candidate at the Republican Convention
as sent from God.All in just three weeks. By
definition, it is difficult to imagine surprises. But there will surely be more
and even bigger ones between now and November. In most democratic countries, an
election campaign lasts for between three and six weeks. In the United States,
it lasts ten months, from the start of the primary elections. Normally, no one is
able to guess the result before September, as so many self-appointed prophets
continue to try. It's like predicting the result of a soccer game at half-time
when they go zero to zero.Of the eight US presidential
elections that I have followed more or less closely, in two a minority
candidate won as a result of the emergence of a third candidate (Bill Clinton
thanks to Ross Perot, in 1992 and 1996); in another, the unexpected candidate won
after starting a war in response to a terrorist attack (George W. Bush, in
2004); still, another unexpected candidate won after the outbreak of a serious
financial crisis in September (Barack Obama, in 2008); and in two, the loser in
popular votes won in the Electoral College (Bush, in 2000, and Trump, in 2016).
Almost all predictions in July were dismissed.The excessive duration of
presidential campaigns in the United States is due to the outrageous purpose of
electing a single person as executive president with enormous powers with only
two candidates, that is, an extremely simple and important selection in an
extremely large and complex society. When there are several parties in
competition, the choice of candidates by citizens is less difficult, since
there is always someone who may seem more reliable or less bad to most people.
But with the high polarization created when there are only two candidates, a
large portion of voters are more likely to dislike both.In the United States, when
registering as a voter there is the option to include a party affiliation,
which is usually the condition to participate in the party's primaries, as an
independent, or as a third-party voter. In recent years, the number of
independents has increased to almost half of the electorate. This detracts a
lot from the polls that say, for example, that Trump has the support of 70% of
Republican voters, because it means that they are only 15% of the total voters,
which does not allow for a serious prediction about the general election. The
high number of independents also preludes a high abstention when, as happened
until now, the two candidates are widely rejected.A traditional postulate in
political science was the incumbent advantage, that is, the advantage of the
candidate who is already in office because he can favorably manipulate the
information about his past administration and appear as the known semi-bad
compared to the unknown good in the opposition. But in the last fifteen years,
this advantage has disappeared due to crises, new governments' inefficiency,
unfulfilled promises and expectations, loss of credibility, and protest votes.
Governments lose more re-elections than ever, new parties and candidates appear
and, in some countries, the most rookie or the one who has always been in the
opposition wins. For many voters, almost any stranger can now be less bad than
a known semi-bad, because the latter is no longer credible. If the candidates
were now Donald Trump and Kamala Harris, we would be facing an unprecedented
situation: the two would be known semi-bad, one as former president and the
other as vice president. A new candidate might be more attractive. But it would
be another big surprise if the entire Democratic Party would group behind her
or him.Most likely, the campaigns of the
next three months will have to focus on discouraging abstention and promoting
the vote that each person sees as the lesser evil. The real campaign will begin
after the holidays, in not three but six weeks. We haven't seen anything yet.    Published in El Pais, July 23, 2024





























 https://elpais.com/opinion/2024-07-23/campana-en-ee-uu-aun-no-hemos-visto-nada.html======================            The decline of the American EmpireAll empires in history have had periods of rise and periods
of decline, from the Roman Empire and a dozen empires in Asia to the European
colonial empires, such as the Spanish and British. Regarding the United States
of America, seen in perspective and taking into account its relative shares of
the world's population, economy, military, and science, there is little doubt
that the peak period was from 1940 to 1960. The United States won World War II,
one of the few just wars in history; after victory, it designed the world order
with the United Nations, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund,
and created NATO with European allies. The decades of the forties and fifties
were also of American technological and cultural hegemony with automobiles,
household appliances, television, Coca-Cola and Hollywood blockbusters.

The euphoria ended with the
assassination of President Kennedy in 1963. The sixties and seventies were of
internal and external disorder, with the civil rights movements on the one hand
and the absurd and criminal war in Vietnam on the other. In contrast to the
pattern of previous decades, there was a succession of presidents who did not
complete a second term: Kennedy was assassinated, Johnson withdrew from the second
primaries, Nixon resigned, Ford embarrassed himself, and Carter lost
reelection. It was a country in disorder and decline.

But there was a rebound. Since
1980, presidents Reagan, Bush Sr. and Clinton made a turn that could be
compared to that of Emperor Octavian Augustus in Rome, also after a decline:
concentrating on foreign and military policy and giving more autonomy to the
provinces or states in domestic affairs, including social issues. It was a new
period of imperial rise. The Cold War culminated in the reunification of
Germany and the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Clinton attempted to integrate
the new Russia while continuing to support less interventionist domestic
policies on welfare and family issues.

This rebound ended with the
terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. Thus, the two periods of ascension
were closed by two traumatic episodes of those that any citizen remembers where
he was when he knew about: the assassination of JFK and 9/11.

Since then, the Government once
again engaged in warlike adventures such as an imaginary "Global War on Terror"
and absurd "preventive" wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria and Libya, now without
the mandatory draft that had generated so many rebellions, but with an army of
professional volunteers. After learning the lesson of the negative political
effects of these wars, a further step has been taken in Ukraine: professional
troops are no longer even sent, but only weapons (purchased by the Government
from American manufacturers in charge of citizens' taxes that the receiving
country will have to pay for).

At the same time, political
polarization has accentuated by an overload of the domestic public agenda with
issues of immigration, race, family, gender, gun control, and voting rights. We
are still in that decline phase.

Another rebound of the American
Empire in the future is possible because the decline is always relative and
depends on the performance of the other world empires. The main potential
rivals are not much better. Russia has been gasping and clawing after losing a
quarter of its territory and half of its population following the dissolution
of the USSR. China is already suffering from the rigidity of the dictatorship
in the face of an incipient economic crisis and will suffer an enormous loss of
population due to a shortage of women and low birth rates. And the European
Union is still a project under construction (which would need an Emperor
Augustus turn, as I already explained in the previous post).

The greatest weakness of the
United States is its inefficient political system, with separation of powers
and only two parties, which is poorly capable of governing such a large and
complex country. But whoever wins the presidential election this November,
within four years the aging boomer generation will retire, and new creative
energy will arrive from the younger ones, including women who are still new to
the Presidency.Published in La Vanguardia, July 22, 2024:https://www.lavanguardia.com/opinion/20240722/9819461/declive-imperio-americano.htmlcf

La crescita incontrollata di dati prodotti da molte sorgenti, eterogenee e di- namiche, spinge molti possessori di tali dati a immagazzinarli su server nel cloud, anche al fine di condividerli con terze parti. La condivisione di dati su server (possibilmente) non fidati fonte di importanti e non banali questioni riguardanti sicurezza, privacy, confidenzialit e controllo degli accessi. Al fine di prevenire accessi incontrollati ai dati, una tipica soluzione consiste nel cifrare i dati stessi. Seguendo tale strada, la progettazione e la realizzazione di politiche di accesso ai dati cifrati da parte di terze parti (che possono avere differenti diritti sui dati stessi) un compito complesso, che impone la presenza di un controllore fidato delle politiche. Una possibile soluzione l'impiego di un meccanismo per il controllo degli accessi basato su schemi di cifratura attribute-base (ABE ), che permette al possessore dei dati di cifrare i dati in funzione delle politiche di accesso dei dati stessi. Di contro, l'adozione di tali meccanismi di controllo degli accessi presentano due problemi (i) privacy debole: le politiche di accesso sono pubbliche e (ii) inefficienza: le politiche di accesso sono statiche e una loro modifica richiede la ricifratura (o la cifratura multipla) di tutti i dati. Al fine di porre rimedio a tali problemi, il lavoro proposto in questa tesi prende in con- siderazione un particolare schema di cifratura attribute-based, chiamato inner product encryption (IPE, che gode della propriet attribute-hiding e pertanto riesce a proteggere la privatezza delle politiche di accesso) e lo combina con le tecniche di proxy re-encryption, che introducono una maggiore flessibilit ed efficienza. La prima parte di questa tesi discute l'adeguatezza dell'introduzione di un meccanismo di controllo degli accessi fondato su schema basato su inner product e proxy re-encryption (IPPRE ) al fine di garantire la condivisione sicura di dati immagazzinati su cloud server non fidati. Pi specificamente, proponiamo due proponiamo due versioni di IPE : in prima istanza, presentiamo una versione es- tesa con proxy re-encryption di un noto schema basato su inner product [1]. In seguito, usiamo tale schema in uno scenario in cui vengono raccolti e gestiti dati medici. In tale scenario, una volta che i dati sono stati raccolti, le politiche di ac- cesso possono variare al variare delle necessit dei diversi staff medici. Lo schema proposto delega il compito della ricifratura dei dati a un server proxy parzial- mente fidato, che pu trasformare la cifratura dei dati (che dipende da una polit- ica di accesso) in un'altra cifratura (che dipende da un'altra politica di accesso) senza per questo avere accesso ai dati in chiaro o alla chiave segreta utilizzata dal possessore dei dati. In tal modo, il possessore di una chiave di decifratura corrispondente alla seconda politica di accesso pu accedere ai dati senza intera- gire con il possessore dei dati (richiedendo cio una chiave di decifratura associata alla propria politica di accesso). Presentiamo un'analisi relativa alle prestazioni di tale schema implementato su curve ellittiche appartenenti alle classi SS, MNT e BN e otteniamo incoraggianti risultati sperimentali. Dimostriamo inoltre che lo schema proposto sicuro contro attacchi chosen plaintext sotto la nota ipotesi DLIN. In seconda istanza, presentiamo una versione ottimizzata dello schema proposto in precedenza (E-IPPRE ), basata su un ben noto schema basato suinner product, proposto da Kim [2]. Lo schema E-IPPRE proposto richiede un numero costante di operazioni di calcolo di pairing e ci garantisce che gli oggetti prodotti dall esecuzione dello schema (chiavi di decifratura, chiavi pubbliche e le cifrature stesse) sono di piccole rispetto ai parametri di sicurezza e sono efficientemente calcolabili. Testiamo sperimentalmente l'efficienza dello schema proposto e lo proviamo (selettivamente nei confronti degli attributi) sicuro nei confronti di attacchi chosen plaintext sotto la nota ipotesi BDH. In altri termini, lo schema proposto non rivela alcuna informazione riguardante le politiche di accesso. La seconda parte di questa tesi presenta uno schema crittografico per la condivisione sicura dei dati basato su crittografia attribute-based e adatto per scenari basati su IoT. Come noto, il problema principale in tale ambito riguarda le limitate risorse computazionali dei device IoT coinvolti. A tal proposito, proponiamo uno schema che combina la flessibilit di E-IPPRE con l'efficienza di uno schema di cifratura simmetrico quale AES, ottenendo uno schema di cifratura basato su inner product, proxy-based leggero (L-IPPRE ). I risultati sperimentali confermano l'adeguatezza di tale schema in scenari IoT.Riferimenti [1] Jong Hwan Park. Inner-product encryption under standard assumptions. Des. Codes Cryptography, 58(3):235–257, March 2011. [2] Intae Kim, Seong Oun Hwang, Jong Hwan Park, and Chanil Park. An effi- cient predicate encryption with constant pairing computations and minimum costs. IEEE Trans. Comput., 65(10):2947–2958, October 2016. ; With the ever-growing production of data coming from multiple, scattered, and highly dynamical sources, many providers are motivated to upload their data to the cloud servers and share them with other persons for different purposes. However, storing data on untrusted cloud servers imposes serious concerns in terms of security, privacy, data confidentiality, and access control. In order to prevent privacy and security breaches, it is vital that data is encrypted first before it is outsourced to the cloud. However, designing access control mod- els that enable different users to have various access rights to the shared data is the main challenge. To tackle this issue, a possible solution is to employ a cryptographic-based data access control mechanism such as attribute-based encryption (ABE ) scheme, which enables a data owner to take full control over data access. However, access control mechanisms based on ABE raise two chal- lenges: (i) weak privacy: they do not conceal the attributes associated with the ciphertexts, and therefore they do not satisfy attribute-hiding security, and (ii) inefficiency: they do not support efficient access policy change when data is required to be shared among multiple users with different access policies. To address these issues, this thesis studies and enhances inner-product encryption (IPE ), a type of public-key cryptosystem, which supports the attribute-hiding property as well as the flexible fine-grained access control based payload-hiding property, and combines it with an advanced cryptographic technique known as proxy re-encryption (PRE ). The first part of this thesis discusses the necessity of applying the inner- product proxy re-encryption (IPPRE ) scheme to guarantee secure data sharing on untrusted cloud servers. More specifically, we propose two extended schemes of IPE : in the first extended scheme, we propose an inner-product proxy re- encryption (IPPRE ) protocol derived from a well-known inner-product encryp- tion scheme [1]. We deploy this technique in the healthcare scenario where data, collected by medical devices according to some access policy, has to be changed afterwards for sharing with other medical staffs. The proposed scheme delegates the re-encryption capability to a semi-trusted proxy who can transform a dele- gator's ciphertext associated with an attribute vector to a new ciphertext associ- ated with delegatee's attribute vector set, without knowing the underlying data and private key. Our proposed policy updating scheme enables the delegatee to decrypt the shared data with its own key without requesting a new decryption key. We analyze the proposed protocol in terms of its performance on three dif- ferent types of elliptic curves such as the SS curve, the MNT curve, and the BN curve, respectively. Hereby, we achieve some encouraging experimental results. We show that our scheme is adaptive attribute-secure against chosen-plaintext under standard Decisional Linear (D-Linear ) assumption. To improve the per- formance of this scheme in terms of storage, communication, and computation costs, we propose an efficient inner-product proxy re-encryption (E-IPPRE ) scheme using the transformation of Kim's inner-product encryption method [2]. The proposed E-IPPRE scheme requires constant pairing operations for its al- gorithms and ensures a short size of the public key, private key, and ciphertext,making it the most efficient and practical compared to state of the art schemes in terms of computation and communication overhead. We experimentally as- sess the efficiency of our protocol and show that it is selective attribute-secure against chosen-plaintext attacks in the standard model under Asymmetric De- cisional Bilinear Diffie-Hellman assumption. Specifically, our proposed schemes do not reveal any information about the data owner's access policy to not only the untrusted servers (e.g, cloud and proxy) but also to the other users. The second part of this thesis presents a new lightweight secure data sharing scheme based on attribute-based cryptography for a specific IoT -based health- care application. To achieve secure data sharing on IoT devices while preserving data confidentiality, the IoT devices encrypt data before it is outsourced to the cloud and authorized users, who have corresponding decryption keys, can ac- cess the data. The main challenge, in this case, is on the one hand that IoT devices are resource-constrained in terms of energy, CPU, and memory. On the other hand, the existing public-key encryption mechanisms (e.g., ABE ) require expensive computation. We address this issue by combining the flexibility and expressiveness of the proposed E-IPPRE scheme with the efficiency of symmet- ric key encryption technique (AES ) and propose a light inner-product proxy re-encryption (L-IPPRE ) scheme to guarantee secure data sharing between dif- ferent entities in the IoT environment. The experimental results confirm that the proposed L-IPPRE scheme is suitable for resource-constrained IoT scenar- ios.References [1] Jong Hwan Park. Inner-product encryption under standard assumptions. Des. Codes Cryptography, 58(3):235–257, March 2011. [2] Intae Kim, Seong Oun Hwang, Jong Hwan Park, and Chanil Park. An effi- cient predicate encryption with constant pairing computations and minimum costs. IEEE Trans. Comput., 65(10):2947–2958, October 2016.

[spa] Por más de cien años la reelección legislativa fue una institución en el Poder Legislativo mexicano. Salvo la Constitución de Cádiz y la Constitución de Apatzingán, ninguno de los textos fundamentales que estuvieron vigentes entre 1812 y 1917, contemplaron la introducción de restricciones para la reelección indefinida de legisladores. El 29 de abril de 1933 se promulgó una Reforma Constitucional para prohibir, por primera vez en la historia de México, la reelección inmediata de legisladores. Dicha reforma, promovida por los miembros del Partido Nacional Revolucionario (PNR), antecesor del Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI), permitió la consolidación en el poder de dicho partido, logró una estricta disciplina partidista de sus militantes y derivó en la subordinación del Congreso al partido oficial. La Reforma de 1933 creó repercusiones negativas que prevalecen en la actualidad: el impedimento del establecimiento de carreras parlamentarias y la desprofesionalización de los legisladores, su falta de responsabilidad y desvinculación frente a sus representados; el debilitamiento del Legislativo y su subordinación frente al Ejecutivo; y la ineficiencia parlamentaria que se genera por la renovación total y periódica del Congreso. Además, la no reelección inmediata de legisladores instauró un sistema de rotación obligatoria de cargos, que provocó que los políticos basaran sus carreras en torno a la lealtad hacia su partido. El 10 de febrero de 2014 se publicó en el Diario Oficial de la Federación una Reforma Constitucional en materia político-electoral que entrará en vigor en 2018 y permitirá (de nuevo) la reelección inmediata de legisladores en México. Sin embargo, al ser el tema de la no reelección inmediata de legisladores en México de una gran relevancia histórica y tener una gran importancia política, el debate de sus argumentos a favor y en contra continuará en el marco de la recién aprobada Reforma y seguirá siendo motivo de análisis y discusión, pues el principio anti-reeleccionista que promovió la Revolución está muy arraigado en el sentir del mexicano. La hipótesis de la presente investigación se centra en que a pesar de la restricción constitucional, la reelección legislativa es una práctica común en México, ya que aunque está prohibido reelegirse de manera inmediata para el mismo cargo, los legisladores se reeligen consecutivamente pasando de una Cámara federal a otra, o del Congreso federal a los Congresos locales, y que lo anterior, ha permitido el desarrollo de carreras parlamentarias en México. La importancia de este trabajo radica no sólo en que entra en el debate de la no reelección legislativa consecutiva desde una óptica político-jurídica, sino que va más allá al hacer un análisis empírico de las trayectorias políticas de los 11 mil 762 legisladores que han pasado por el Congreso Federal y los Congresos Locales entre 1997 y 2018. Analiza el Poder Legislativo al completo, ya que además del Congreso de la Unión, incluye a las Legislaturas de las 32 Entidades Federativas de la República Mexicana. Así, el presente trabajo de investigación, titulado "La no reelección consecutiva de legisladores en México, 1997-2018", tiene como objetivo determinar si la reelección inmediata de legisladores (aunque no para el mismo cargo) es una práctica común que ya se daba de facto aun antes de la Reforma de 2014, y si la prohibición ha impedido la profesionalización de los legisladores y el desarrollo de verdaderas carreras parlamentarias en México. ; [cat] Per més de cent anys la reelecció legislativa va ser una institució en el Poder Legislatiu mexicà. Excepte la Constitució de Cádiz i la Constitució d'Apatzingán, cap dels textos fonamentals que van estar vigents entre 1812 i 1917, van contemplar la introducció de restriccions per a la reelecció indefinida de legisladors. El 29 d'abril de 1933 es va promulgar una Reforma Constitucional per prohibir, per primer cop en la història de Mèxic, la reelecció immediata de legisladors. Aquesta reforma, promoguda pels membres del Partido Nacional Revolucionario (PNR), antecessor del Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI), va permetre la consolidació en el poder d'aquest partit, va aconseguir una estricta disciplina partidista dels seus militants i va derivar en la subordinació del Congrés al partit oficial. La Reforma de 1933 va crear repercussions negatives que perduren en l'actualitat: l'impediment de l'establiment de carreres parlamentàries i la desprofessionalització dels legisladors, la seva falta de responsabilitat i desvinculació enfront els seus representats; el debilitament del Legislatiu i la seva subordinació davant l'Executiu; i la ineficiència parlamentària generada per la renovació total i periòdica del Congrés. A més, la no reelecció immediata de legisladors va instaurar un sistema de rotació obligatòria de càrrecs, que va produir que els polítics basessin les seves carreres al voltant de la lleialtat envers el seu partit. El 10 de febrer de 2014 es va publicar al Diari Oficial de la Federació una Reforma Constitucional en matèria polític-electoral que entrarà en vigor el 2018 i permetrà (de nou) la reelecció immediata de legisladors a Mèxic. No obstant això, en ser el tema de la no reelecció immediata de legisladors a Mèxic d'una gran rellevància històrica i tenir una gran importància política, el debat dels seus arguments a favor i en contra continuarà en el marc de la recentment aprovada Reforma i seguirà sent motiu d'anàlisi i discussió, ja que el principi anti-reeleccionista que va promoure la Revolució està molt arrelat en el sentir del mexicà. La hipòtesi de la present investigació es centra en que tot i la restricció constitucional, la reelecció legislativa és una pràctica comuna a Mèxic, ja que tot i que està prohibit reelegir de manera immediata per al mateix càrrec, els legisladors es reelegeixen consecutivament passant d'una Cambra federal a una altra, o del Congrés federal als Congressos locals, fet que ha permès el desenvolupament de carreres parlamentàries a Mèxic. La importància d'aquest treball rau no només en què entra en el debat de la no reelecció legislativa consecutiva des d'una òptica politicojurídica, sinó que va més enllà en fer una anàlisi empírica de les trajectòries polítiques dels 11 mil 762 legisladors que han passat pel Congrés Federal i els Congressos Locals entre 1997 i 2018. Analitza el Poder Legislatiu al complet, ja que a més del Congrés de la Unió, inclou les Legislatures de les 32 Entitats Federatives de la República Mexicana. Així, el present treball d'investigació, titulat "La no reelecció consecutiva de legisladors a Mèxic, 1997-2018", té com a objectiu determinar si la reelecció immediata de legisladors (encara que no per al mateix càrrec) és una pràctica comuna que ja es donava de fet fins i tot abans de la reforma de 2014, i si la prohibició ha impedit la professionalització dels legisladors i el desenvolupament de veritables carreres parlamentàries a Mèxic. ; [eng] For over hundred years the legislative re-election was an institution in the Mexican legislative power. With the exceptions of the Cadiz and Apatzingan constitutions, none of the fundamental documents active between 1812 and 1917, contemplated implementing restrictions to the indefinite reelection of legislators. On April 29th 1933 a constitutional reform was enacted to prohibit, for the first time in Mexican history, the immediate reelection of legislators. This reform, promoted by members of the National Revolution Party (PNR), former Institutional Revolution Party (PRI), endorsed the empowerment of the party, providing a strict discipline within the militants and bringing the subordination of the congress to the official party. The 1933 Reform created drawbacks that are still present nowadays: the deterrence to establish parliamentary careers and the legislator's de- professionalization, lack of liability and connection with their represented people; the weakening of the legislature and its subordination to the Executive branch; also, the parliamentary inefficiency generated when the congress is totally replaced repeatedly. On the other side, the prohibition of the immediate reelection for the legislators generated a position rotation system, encouraging the politicians to based their careers on the loyalty to the party. On February 10th 2014 the Official Federation Journal published a constitutional reform in electoral policy, permitting (once again) the immediate re-election of the Mexican legislators. This reform will become effective in 2018. However, this being a relevant topic in Mexican history and of great political importance, the debate of the arguments for and against the recently approved reform will continue, and remain a reason of analysis and dispute due to the anti- reelection principles promoted by the Revolution that is still deep rooted in the Mexican sentiment. The hypothesis of this investigation centers around that despite the current constitutional restriction, the legislative re-election is a common practice in Mexico. Although it is prohibited to be immediately reelected to the same position, the legislators get reelected consecutively going from one Federal Congress to another, or from the Federal to local congresses, allowing the development of parliamentary careers in Mexico. The importance of this work lies not only because it addresses the discussion about non-legislative consecutive re-election from a political-legal perspective, but goes further making an empirical analysis of the political trajectories of the 11,762 legislators who have passed by the Federal Congress and the Local Congress between 1997 and 2018. It analyzes the entire legislative power, because it includes the Congress of the Union and the Legislatures of the 32 Federative Entities of the Mexican Republic. The present investigation, titled "The no consecutive re-election of legislators in Mexico, 1997-2018", has the objective to determine whether the immediate re- election of legislators (with the exception of the same position) is a common practice and in fact it was already present before the 2014 Reform, and if the prohibition had impeded the legislator's professionalization together with the development of true parliamentary careers in Mexico.

The study represents a background study for the proposed Uganda Country Economic Memorandum (CEM), which seeks to address the issue of efficient use of oil resources and examine synergies between the oil industry and the rest of the economy, through growth poles or linkages. The oil industry can help Uganda to promote robust growth in the economy. However, it is important to keep in mind that it will take a number of years until oil revenues start flowing into Uganda s economy. After the Final Investment Decision (FID) is reached, it will take time to develop the oil fields and start oil production. In the meantime, there are immediate opportunities opening up for Uganda s businesses to supply the oil industry with goods and services. In most cases, Uganda s suppliers, especially micro, small and medium enterpises (MSMEs), are not expected to become first tier contractors to the International Oil Company (IOCs). The main objective of this study is to provide recommendations to the Government of Uganda (GoU) on policies and strategies of leveraging the oil discoveries for the development of the national economy in order to transform the oil resources into sustained growth. The study reviews the typology of policies for local sourcing used in the world. It includes ample examples of other countries experiences with developing their local content policies and providing support to priority sectors to boost local content which could be useful for Uganda from the standpoint of lessons learned. The study conducts a detailed analysis of the binding constraints faced by domestic oil and gas suppliers in Uganda, takes stock of existing national content support initiatives and identifies areas which are in urgent need of further support. The study examines how the oil sector can be used as a driver of agriculture and fisheries sectors in the Albertine Region and other regions of Uganda from the standpoint of food supply to the oil camps.

This paper focuses on recent theoretical developments in political economy and what role they might play in explaining and reforming individual country and global distortions in food and agricultural markets. Four groups of forces are isolated: political governance structures emphasizing the role of democratic mechanisms; the design of polycentric structures for assigned governmental authority for setting policy instruments; market structure and other socioeconomic characteristics; and the role of sector mobility and asset diversification. Each of these forces are distilled and data sources are reviewed that will allow econometric specifications that have both explanatory and policy reform implications.

More than a decade of ambitious sector reform has led to a period of stability in the Armenian energy sector. The sector faces challenges more typical of a developed economy than an emerging one: policymakers' concerns have shifted from avoiding total system collapse to optimizing the energy supply mix to provide affordable, reliable, and sustainable energy services. However, some old challenges remain and new ones have arisen. Armenia is still vulnerable to energy supply disruptions; tariffs lag the full cost of service provision; and a significant investment backlog impedes progress in energy infrastructure. The purpose of this note is to present the analysis of the challenges facing Armenia's energy sector, specifically, its electricity, natural gas, and heating subsectors. The intention of the note is not to prescribe solutions, but to present analysis of options and tradeoffs that the Government can use to inform its decision-making. Armenia's energy sector has undergone a series of reforms over the last fifteen years, which included privatization of the electricity distribution and gas companies, and some generating companies, establishment of an independent regulator, and development of a formal strategic plan for the sector. This energy sector overview highlights important outcomes from reforms and describes key sector characteristics.

Conferences are generally acknowledged to be a well-established activity of academic, scientific and professional (ASP) practice. However, there is no established mainstream field of conference learning, and the literature and opinion on the topic is scant, and thinly dispersed across a wide spread and uncollated multidisciplinary literature. This thesis looks to lift the lid on this much passed-over area of ASP practice, and in particular its role as a medium of information dissemination and knowledge transfer. Specifically it examines the role, efficacy and perception of poster presentation as a continuing education tool, and as a medium of scientific communication. The thesis begins by exploring the use of posters in conference and educational settings, and establishes their historical precedent. Poster presentation evolved as a means to allow more people to present their work, but over time the numbers of conference posters being presented have increased exponentially, and the mass of information that is made available in poster format has become unmanageable. The few studies that have examined the motivations of conference attendees have placed education (in the form of disseminating and accessing information) as the prime stated reason for attending conferences, closely followed by a wish to network with peers in their professional communities. The fields of continuing education and professional development actively recognise conferences as learning opportunities, and higher education is a consistent reference point in conference literature, with many ASP conference delegates either employed or enrolled in higher education institutions, or following professions that are grounded in higher education and training. However conferences as a site and means of learning are neglected as an area of academic study, and there is limited research that examines their educational efficacy. By way of four sub-studies, this research looked to answer the following overarching research question: What is the effectiveness of academic and scientific poster presentations, and how do academics perceive their importance in knowledge transfer? Sub-Study I carried out a state of the art literature review (51 included studies) to determine the effectiveness of poster presentations on knowledge transfer. Sub-Study II expanded this enquiry and employed an enhanced informetric mapping review that presented quantitative data on poster presentation literature from a total of 249 databases and a comparative academic search engine. Sub-Study III employed a mixed-method design survey exploring conference delegate perceptions of poster presentation, using open- and closed-ended questions among conference participants (N=37), emerging and predetermined approaches to thematic formation, and quantitative and qualitative data collection and analysis. Sub-Study IV conducted a series of mixed-method web-based expert interviews (N=16) to explore delegate motivations and needs for conference attendance and their perceptions of poster presentation, using open- and closed-ended questions, emerging and predetermined approaches to thematic formation, and quantitative and qualitative data collection and analysis. The findings are presented in two main themes: The history and research on the efficacy of poster presentations, and Conference delegates' motivations and their evaluations of poster presentations. Sub-Study I found no evidence that posters were effective as standalone media in facilitating knowledge transfer, be it through an increase in knowledge, change in attitude or behaviour. This runs contrary to the routine poster practices that can be seen at many conference events, where poster presentation is perceived as an established way of sharing knowledge, and as having to function as a standalone entity as well as a presented medium. As such, a dichotomy was seen to emerge whereby posters were being presented with an aim to inform and generate knowledge, yet the available research and theory indicated that this would be unlikely to be achieved using conventional poster practices. However, the study also showed a paucity of foundational research. Sub-Study II revealed the massive global scope of poster presentation, with returns seen from every discipline and continent. Medicine was seen as the largest contributory discipline, outpacing its nearest rivals by some 70%. However, aside from a very limited amount of published research on poster presentation, it was observed that over 99% of the returns led only to a title or abstract mention of poster presentations. Whilst Sub-Study II confirmed massive levels of engagement in poster presentation, it also uncovered literature and opinion that bemoaned its efficacy and value. In order to examine this further, the motivations of conference delegates were explored in two further sub-studies, along with their perceptions of poster presentation. The data from sub-studies III and IV confirmed the motivations of conference delegates to share and disseminate information within gathered conference peer-communities, and that this enabled them to network with like-minded peers. However, there was a clear differentiation between the subjective benefits of conference attendance (which appear to be well catered for), and the way that the objective delegate needs of effective dissemination and recognition are met. The sub-study data reflected a hierarchy of oral presentation being more highly valued than poster presentation, but despite their numeric presence at conferences, this research showed that poster presentations do not serve to disseminate or generate knowledge effectively. Moreover, there is a clear expression that the format of poster presentation is outdated, and needs to be revised in order to increase its value and effectiveness. The thesis reveals that overall, less than 50% of conference outputs are developed into publications that can be used as an effective knowledge resource by the ASP community. The inability of poster presentations to transfer and generate knowledge is consolidated by the triangulation of theory on knowledge development, and points towards a need to improve the depth of information that is made available, and also the way it is disseminated pre-, per, and post-event. The cost of this inefficiency can be further expressed in monetary terms of multi-billion dollar annual expenditures. In relation to the opinions expressed in the literature and the voices featured in this study, developments in the informational management of poster presentations (and conference outputs as a whole) would not only increase their educational efficacy, but also increase their functional value as a means of scientific communication. This research offers a reasoned and substantiated argument for conducting immediate research and development in this area. Accordingly, institutions and governmental bodies should consider the massive amounts of human and monetary capital that are committed to conference engagement on a yearly basis, and instigate and support developments that will help to make conference participation and publication a more worthwhile activity, with concrete and demonstrable outputs that support the needs of a globally connected ASP community. ; Tieteellisiä konferensseja ja niihin osallistumista pidetään vakiintuneina käytäntöinä akateemisen tiedeyhteisön keskuudessa (ASP-käytäntö; academic, scientific and professional). Siitä huolimatta konferenssien aikana tapahtuvaa oppimista tarkasteleva tieteellinen tutkimus puuttuu lähes kokonaan. Aihetta käsittelevä tutkimuskirjallisuus ja keskustelu on vähäistä. Lisäksi keskustelu on hajaantunut eri tieteenaloja koskevaan tutkimuskirjallisuuteen. Tämän väitöskirjan tarkoituksena on valaista tätä paljolti huomiotta jäänyttä ASP-käytäntöä sekä sen roolia tiedon ja oppimisen välittäjänä. Väitöskirjassa tarkastellaan erityisesti posteriesitysten roolia ja hyödyllisyyttä sekä tiedeyhteisön käsityksiä niistä elinikäisen oppimisen työkaluina ja tieteellisen kommunikaation välineinä. Väitöskirjan alussa tarkastellaan posteriesitysten käyttöä konferenssi- ja koulutusympäristöissä sekä esitellään niiden historiallista taustaa. Posteriesitykset otettiin käyttöön, jotta mahdollisimman moni akateemisen yhteisön jäsen saisi mahdollisuuden esitellä tutkimustaan. Ajan kuluessa posteriesitysten määrä on kuitenkin kasvanut räjähdysmäisesti, mikä on puolestaan johtanut siihen, että niiden sisältämästä tietomassasta on tullut hallitsematonta. Niissä harvoissa tutkimuksissa, joissa on tarkasteltu syitä konferensseihin osallistumiselle, on todettu, että tärkeimpänä syynä osallistujat ovat pitäneet oppimista (tiedon jakamista ja vastaanottamista). Lähes tulkoon yhtä tärkeäksi syyksi osallistujat mainitsivat halun verkostoitua muiden tutkijoiden kanssa heidän ammatillisissa yhteisöissään. Elinikäistä oppimista ja ammatillista kehittymistä tutkivilla aloilla konferensseja yleisesti pidetään oppimisympäristöinä, minkä lisäksi korkeakouluopetukseen viitataan alinomaa konferensseja koskevassa kirjallisuudessa. Monet ASP-konferenssien osanottajat myös joko työskentelevät tai opiskelevat korkeakouluissa tai ovat ammateissa, joiden perusta on korkeakouluopetuksessa ja koulutuksessa. Siitä huolimatta konferenssien rooli oppimisympäristönä ja -välineenä on jäänyt paitsioon akateemisessa tutkimuksessa ja vain vähäinen määrä tutkimusta tarkastelee niiden koulutuksellista hyötyä. Väitöskirja muodostuu neljästä osatutkimuksesta, joiden avulla etsitään vastausta eri aihealueet yhteen kokoavaan tutkimuskysymykseen: Kuinka hyödyllisiä akateemiset ja tieteelliset posteriesitykset ovat ja kuinka merkittävinä tiedonvälittäjinä akateeminen yhteisö niitä pitää? Ensimmäisessä osatutkimuksessa toteutettiin kirjallisuusarvio tuoreimmasta saatavilla olevasta tutkimuksesta (N=51 tutkimusta). Sen tarkoituksena oli määrittää posteriesitysten hyödyllisyys tiedonvälityksessä. Osatutkimus II laajensi tätä kysymystä käyttäen tehostettua informetristä review-tutkimusta, jossa analysoitiin kvantitatiivista dataa posteriesityksiä käsittelevästä kirjallisuudesta kaiken kaikkiaan 249 tietokannasta ja vertailuja tekevästä akateemisesta hakukoneesta. Kolmannessa osatutkimuksessa suunniteltiin ja toteutettiin monimenetelmäinen kysely, jolla kartoitettiin konferenssivieraiden (N=37) käsityksiä posteriesityksistä. Kyselyssä käytettiin avoimia ja suljettuja kysymyksiä, ennakoimatonta ja ennakoivaa lähestymistapaa temaattisessa kysymyksenasettelussa sekä kvalitatiivista ja kvantitatiivista aineistonkeruuta ja analyysia. Neljännessä osatutkimuksessa suoritettiin sarja monimenetelmäisiä verkkohaastatteluita (N=16), joilla kartoitettiin konferenssivieraiden syitä ja tarpeita konferensseihin osallistumiselle sekä heidän käsityksiään posteriesityksistä. Haastatteluissa käytettiin avoimia ja suljettuja kysymyksiä, ennakoimatonta ja ennakoivaa lähestymistapaa kysymyksenasettelussa sekä kvalitatiivista ja kvantitatiivista aineistonkeruuta ja analyysia. Tutkimustulokset esitellään kahden pääteeman mukaisesti: Posteriesitysten historia ja niiden hyödyllisyyttä koskeva tutkimus ja Konferenssivieraiden syyt osallistumiselle ja heidän arvionsa posteriesityksistä. Ensimmäisen osatutkimuksen perusteella ei löytynyt näyttöä siitä, että posteriesitykset olisivat hyödyllisiä itsenäisessä välittäjäroolissa ja helpottamassa tiedonsiirtoa, olipa kyseessä tiedon lisääminen tai muutos asenteessa tai käytöksessä. Tämä havainto on ristiriidassa yleisten ja rutiininomaisten konferenssikäytäntöjen kanssa, joissa posteriesityksiä pidetään vakiintuneena tapana jakaa tietoa sekä toimivan paitsi itsenäisenä kokonaisuutena myös suullisena esityksenä. Näin ollen esiin nousi kahtiajako: Toisaalta posteriesitysten tarkoituksena pidetään tiedottamista ja tiedon lisäämistä, mutta silti olemassa oleva tutkimus ja teoria ovat osoittaneet, että tämä tavoite ei todennäköisesti toteudu nykyisillä posteriesityskäytännöillä. Toisaalta tutkimuksessa kävi ilmi myös perustutkimuksen vähäisyys. Osatutkimus II paljasti posteriesitysten maailmanlaajuisen kattavuuden, sillä hakutuloksia saatiin joka tutkimusalalta ja maanosasta. Ylivoimaisesti eniten hakutuloksia saatiin lääketieteestä, noin 70 % enemmän kuin muilta tieteenaloilta. Joka tapauksessa, lukuun ottamatta sitä, että posteriesityksiä koskevan julkaistun tutkimuksen määrä on todella vähäinen, yli 99 % hakutuloksista johti ainoastaan mainintaan posteriesityksen otsikosta tai tiivistelmästä. Toisin sanoen, vaikka osatutkimus II vahvisti posteriesitysten vahvan aseman, se myös toi esiin tutkimuskirjallisuudesta löydettävän ja asiantuntijoiden esittämän kritiikin niiden hyödyllisyydestä ja merkityksestä. Tämän asian lähempi tarkastelu vaati konferenssivieraiden motiivien sekä heidän posteriesityksiä koskevien käsitysten kartoitusta vielä kahdessa osatutkimuksessa. Kolmannesta ja neljännestä osatutkimuksesta saatu tutkimustieto vahvisti sen, että konferenssivieraiden motivaationa toimi tiedon jakaminen ja välittäminen muun konferenssiin osallistuneen vertaisyhteisön kanssa, mikä myös mahdollisti heidän verkostoitumisensa saman alan tutkijoiden kanssa. Tutkimuksessa nousi kuitenkin esiin selkeä ero konferenssiin osallistumisen henkilökohtaisten hyötyjen saavuttamisen (joihin on panostettu ilmeisen hyvin) ja sen välillä, miten vieraiden objektiiviset tarpeet tehokkaaseen tiedonvälitykseen ja tunnustukseen täyttyivät. Osatutkimuksen tutkimustiedosta nousi esiin hierarkia, jossa suullista esitystä arvostettiin posteriesitystä enemmän. Huolimatta posteriesitysten yleisyydestä konferensseissa, ne eivät välitä tai generoi tietoa tehokkaasti. Tämän lisäksi tutkimus osoitti, että nykyisessä muodossaan posteriesitys on vanhentunut ja vaatii uudistamista, jotta sen merkitys ja hyödyllisyys saataisiin palautettua. Väitöskirjan löydösten perusteella käy ilmi, että alle 50 % konferenssiesityksistä päätyy julkaisuihin, joita ASP-yhteisö voi hyödyntää tiedonlähteinä. Myös eri teoriat tiedon kehittymisestä vahvistavat posteriesitysten kyvyttömyyttä välittää ja lisätä tietoa. On tarpeen parantaa esitysten laatua sekä tapaa, jolla niistä saatavaa tietoa välitetään ennen tapahtumaa, sen aikana sekä tapahtuman jälkeen. Tämän tehottomuuden hinta voi rahassa laskettuna nousta vuosittain monen miljardin dollarin kulueräksi. Tutkimuskirjallisuudessa esitettyjen mielipiteiden sekä tässä tutkimuksessa esiin tulleiden näkemysten perusteella posteriesitysten (sekä yleisesti kaikkien konferenssiesitysten) sisältöjen parantaminen lisäisi paitsi niiden koulutuksellista hyötyä, myös niiden tarkoituksenmukaisuutta tieteellisen kommunikaation välineenä. Tutkimus tuo esiin harkitun ja perustellun väittämän, jonka mukaan aihealue vaatii välitöntä tutkimusta ja kehitystä. Sen lisäksi eri instituutioiden ja valtion virastojen tulisi huomioida se valtava henkilö- ja rahapääoma, joka konferensseille varataan vuosittain, ja panna alulle ja tukea kehitystä, joka tekisi konferensseihin osallistumisesta ja konferenssijulkaisemisesta hyödyllisempää toimintaa, joka konkreettisilla tuloksillaan tukisi myös maailmanlaajuisen ASP-yhteisön tarpeita.