Net neutrality: A user's guide

Net neutrality is a complex issue that has generated intense levels of political discussion in the United States, but which has yet to attract significant attention from regulators in the UK. Nevertheless, the question of whether network operators should be prevented from blocking or prioritising certain network traffic or traffic from particular sources is a significant one for a wide range of stakeholders in the digital networked economy. Network operators contend that the build costs for the next generation of networks are so high that they must be permitted to monetise their control over this infrastructure as efficiently as possible. Meanwhile, an eclectic mix of interests including content and service providers, free speech and special interest groups and entertainers, argue that net neutrality regulation is necessary to guarantee that the Internet's core values and social utility are preserved. This article offers an introduction to net neutrality from a UK perspective. The authors explain the technical, commercial, political and legal considerations that underpin the issue and suggest that, whilst net neutrality regulation in its strongest incarnation is not practical or desirable, a level of regulatory action designed to enhance the choices of end users is the best way forward.     

Food aid,scarce resources,and difficult decisions

This article attempts to address the requirements of a methodology for evaluating food aid. It is an extension of an article by Fitzpatrick and Storey, which appeared in a recent issue of Development in Practice (Vol. 1, No. 3). The evaluation of food aid policies is considered from the perspective of a policy maker in a recipient country. Fitzpatrick and Storey analyse one particular project. But the value of evaluating one project depends on how far lessons can be learned which will influence future decisions. Is it worthwhile for a country to negotiate for food aid? Should food-aid policies be pursued, rather than others? Which particular type of food-aid policy should be followed? This article argues the case for an evaluation method that is potentially capable of facilitating these decisions. It then takes some hesitant steps towards defining a method.     

Building assets to reduce vulnerability: microfinance provision by a rural working people's union in Mexico

Proyecto Tequisquiapan (PT) provides protective microfinance services in a small region of rural Mexico, including, importantly, open access to deposit facilities. The authors report on new research which examined PT's record in enabling people with different degrees of vulnerability to build assets and protect themselves from both sudden shocks and more predictable demands for lump sums of cash. Proyecto Tequisquiapan was found to be relatively more useful for the most vulnerable households. Its successes rely on its small scale and on the commitment of its staff, whose salaries are subsidised, to innovation and experimentation in order to remain relevant to members' changing and differentiated financial lifeworlds. This stands in contrast to the current trend towards large‐scale commercialised microfinance. The World Bank, the authors argue, should take note.     

Do vehicle recalls reduce the number of accidents? The case of the U.S. car market

The number of automobile recalls in the U.S. has increased sharply in the last two decades, and the numbers of units involved are often counted in the millions. In 2010 alone, over 20 million vehicles were recalled in the United States, and the massive recalls of full model lines by Toyota have brought this issue to the front pages around the country and the world. However, there is no quantitative evidence of the effect of recalls on safety. Without that evidence, the government and insurance companies have been reluctant to request and use more detailed recall information to increase correction rates, and regulators have not studied the possible link between the growing number of recalls and the risk of life for consumers. In this paper we empirically quantify the effect of vehicle recalls on safety using repeated cross‐sections on accidents of individual drivers and aggregate vehicle recall data to construct synthetic panel data on individual drivers of a particular vehicle model. We estimate the effect of recalls on the number of accidents and find that a 10 percent increase in the recall rate of a particular model reduces the accidents of that model by between 0.78 percent and 1.6 percent when using the full sample of accidents in our data. We also find that recalls classified as “hazardous” are more effective in reducing accidents, and the recall effect is especially strong when we restrict attention to accidents that lead to personal injuries and only include vehicles more likely to be at fault for the accident, but much less so for accidents that only lead to property damage. We also find that vehicle models with recalls with higher correction rates have on average fewer accidents in the years following a recall, which indicates the importance of the role of drivers' behavior regarding recalls on safety. Our findings suggest that policymakers should consider, for example, policies to allow insurance companies to take into account recall correction behavior when pricing auto insurance, which could be made possible through regulatory changes by the U.S. government, and should revisit the complex trade‐offs between pre‐ and post‐market regulation in this important industry. © 2011 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.     

The legal role of medical professionals in decisions to withhold or withdraw life-sustaining treatment: part 1 (New South Wales)

This is the first article in a series of three that examines the legal role of medical professionals in decisions to withhold or withdraw life-sustaining treatment from adults who lack capacity. This article considers the position in New South Wales. A review of the law in this State reveals that medical professionals play significant legal roles in these decisions. However, the law is problematic in a number of respects and this is likely to impede medical professionals' legal knowledge in this area. The article examines the level of training medical professionals receive on issues such as advance directives and substitute decision-making, and the available empirical evidence as to the state of medical professionals' knowledge of the law at the end of life. It concludes that there are gaps in legal knowledge and that law reform is needed in New South Wales.     

Negotiating Education Reform: Teacher Evaluations and Incentives in Chile (1990–2010)

Reforms designed to improve the quality of teaching by reforming personnel practices, such as pay for performance arrangements, usually run into opposition from well‐organized teacher unions that can either block reform in the short run or undermine it over the longer term. The experience of a series of reforms that introduced collective and individual pay incentives for teachers in Chile from 1990 to 2010 provide a rare example of ongoing negotiation with the teacher union that resulted in an institutionalized structure of incentive pay for teachers as well as widespread attitudes of sustained support among teachers for performance pay. Chile offers an important example of how sustained change in incentive pay can be achieved through ongoing negotiation.     

Excluded Again: Village Politics at the Aid Interface

Making use of a rural household survey, we show that in villages with a stronger monopolisation of the aid interface by local élites, households are more likely excluded from all aid. Moreover, these villages have less access to aid but this tends to be insufficient for political alternatives to emerge spontaneously, mainly due to their relatively low visibility in these villages. Finally, if village members themselves manage to bring about a political change, this does not automatically improve the conditions of the most excluded. We recommend aid donors to assume a more active role in searching and selecting community representatives.     

Does Size Matter? Reassessing the Relationship between Aquaculture and Poverty in Bangladesh

Aquaculture has long been promoted by development institutions in Bangladesh on the understanding that it can alleviate poverty. Most of this attention has focused on forms of the activity commonly referred to as ‘small-scale’. This article draws on concepts from the literature on agricultural growth and elaborates a typology of aquaculture based on relations of production which suggests that, in Bangladesh, quasi-capitalist forms of aquaculture may possess greater potential to reduce poverty and enhance food security than the quasi-peasant modes of production generally assumed to do so. The implications of this conclusion are explored.