The Impact of Privatization on Terminal Efficiency: A Case Study of Tema Port

Port and terminal efficiency are of utmost importance to the container shipping industry due to their significance in enhancing the competitive advantage of ports within a region. Consequently, there have always been notable variations of studies around it. This paper analyzes the impact of privatization on terminal efficiency using the Port of Tema as a Case Study. The main objective of this paper is to analyze the efficiency trends of the public and private terminals in the port over the years. To achieve this objective, DEA-CCR methodology was employed to calculate the annual technical efficiency trends of the private and public terminals using four input variables and three output variables. The main results of the paper indicated that the public and private terminals were efficient for multiple years. However, the efficiency scores over the years demonstrated inconsistency, exhibiting notable fluctuations. The findings of this study will aid policymakers across the region on policies relating to the efficiency and ownership structure of ports and terminals.

Principals’and Teachers’Awareness,Knowledge,and Differentiation of Privatization-A Secondary Publication

Based on the keynote report by Professor Martin Thrupp,this paper discusses the hollowing out of education provision by the state and the permeation of managerialism.It was pointed out that principals and boards of trustees in socioeconomically advantaged areas may not be willing to share their benefits with schools in less advantaged areas.The new liberal policies have hollowed out state provision of education,so the education system has come to rely heavily on private actors.This paper also presents the current stage of privatization in Japan and the principals’and teachers’perceptions of privatization.

Rangeland Privatization and Its Impacts on the Zoige Wetlands on the Eastern Tibetan Plateau

The high Zoige Basin （Ruoergai Plateau） on the eastern Tibetan Plateau is a fault depression formed during intensive uplifting of the Tibetan Plateau. The wetland is globally important in biodiversity and is composed of marshes, bogs, fens, wet meadows and shallow water interspersed with low hills and sub-alpine meadows. Most of the Zoige wetlands have long been one of the most important grazing lands in China. Recent rangeland policy has allowed grazing, and usable wetland areas have been being legally allocated to individuals or groups of households on a long-term lease basis. Privatizafion of the wetland has impacted the Zoige wetlands in aspects of hydrologic condition, landscape and biodiversity. The uneven spatial distribution of water resources onprivatelands has led to the practice of extracting ground water, which has decreased the perched water table in Zoige. Fencing off the rangelands and grazing on expanding sand dunes have affected landscapes. Variation in the water table has led to the changes in vegetation diversity, resulting in the changes in wildlife and aquatic diversities and ecosystem processes. Making use all year round of the pasture that was previously grazed only in summer has shrunk the daily activity space of wildlife, and the newly erected fences blocked the movement of wild animals looking for food in the snow to lower and open areas. To maintain the favorable conditions of the Zoige wetland ecosystem, the author suggests that, in addition to biophysical research and implementation of conservation practices, there is an immediate need to initiate an integrated management program, increase public awareness of wetland functions and provide better training for the local conservation staff.

Private Benefits of Politicians and Delayed Privatization

The aim of this paper is to consider the problem of politicians＇ control of state-owned enterprises in a transforming economy. The control of a company can be treated as a choice of a strategy pursued by this company. In order to present politicians＇ influence on a company＇s strategy, we consider the case of a firm controlled by the State Treasury （i.e., by politicians） and a company outside politicians＇ control, both functioning in a favorable and an unfavorable state of the economy. We propose the option-to-switch valuation model as a method of measuring politicians＇ private benefits of control. We illustrate the considerations using data concerning Poland＇s printing industry.

The Research on the negative impact of the efficiency of the generalization performance in privatization of public utilities

Since the last century, China has carried out the reform of public utilities in the ninety time, and has achieved many positive results. The quality and efficiency of public goods supply is greatly improved. The government has changed the role of producer and provider from the past to the role of provider and regulator, which effectively promoted the development of the privatization of public utilities. However, in the achievements there has also been some problems, such as too much emphasis on efficiency to the neglect of social justice and the government＇s public responsibility ＂efficiency generalization＂ problem that requires our attention.

Globalization and Socio-educational Inequalities： A Study of Privatization of Higher Education in India

India is the world＇s largest democracy. The preamble of the constitution enshrines the values of a socialist, secular and equality. The aim was to create a society, based on fair and equitable distribution of resources and bringing the weaker sections to the mainstream of the society. However with the entry of globalization rapid changes were being made in the structural policy. Markets started taking over from where the state left off. it has been two decades and half since the liberalization, privatization and globalization phase was ushered in. Subsequently, privatization of education is rampant in each part of education system of India. The main objective of this paper is to find out socio-educational inequality at higher education level and to explore the educational participation, attainment and performance of scheduled castes at higher education level. Basically, this study is an empirical and exploratory research. Data collection and analysis were done through the data triangulation methods in this research process.

The research on the standard and measure of the efficiency of the generalization performance of privatization of public utilities

The transformation of the development China＇s privatization of city public utilities？ vigorously promote the government function, however, the relative monopoly administrative operation system, functions decentralized system of government regulation and legal system construction is lagging behind, can making the privatization process easily lead to the emergence of efficient generalization, must be identified and avoided. This paper presents efficient generalization of privatization of public utility of our country city in measure, and analyzes the performance efficiency of the three resulting generalization.

Refining Privatization

In search of a blueprint for the privatization of Nigeria＇s oil refineries

Why Has Privatization Failed to Improve Corporate Performance?——A Case Study of Guoguang Ceramics' Privatization

This paper is a case study based on the privatization of Guoguang Ceramics.It is found that,contrary to the thoughts of some scholars, corporation performance actually deteriorated,rather than improved under privatization.We analyze ownership arrangements before and after privatization and find that private ownership arrangements still have deficiencies and are not necessarily better than state ownership arrangements.The existence of private benefits of control is the essential reason why performance had been deteriorating.Private benefits of control under state ownership come from the government’s multiple objectives of corporation control,whereas the benefits with private ownership lie on resources transferred from the corporation.Ta succeed in privatizing SOEs,it is essential that legal systems be strengthened to effectively oversee private benefits of control.

A Study on the Privatization Decisions of China Concepts Stock Based on the Tax Shield Effect

In this paper, we construct a company value model based on the tax shield effect for overseas listing and privatization scenarios. The trade-off process of privatization decisions is simulated in the context of China concept stock companies’ reality. The results indicate that the value of tax shields, the degree of undervaluation, the ability to obtain cash flows, the risk of short selling, the cost of listing transactions, and fraud penalties are critical factors influencing the choice of privatization. The company value analysis shows that tax shield effect positively affects the probability of privatization. Furthermore, the weaker the ability of a company to obtain cash flow when listed overseas, the lower the WACC, the higher the risk of being shorted, and the higher the cost of listing transactions, the higher the probability that a company will choose to go private. Finally, numerical simulations are adopted to validate the validity of the theoretical model and the findings using SINA’s privatization as a case study. The findings can provide academic guidance and a decision-making basis on trading arrangements for CCS companies.

Chinese Privatization: Causes and Outcomes

Chinese privatization has been largely spontaneous. This paper studies its causes and outcomes in efficiency improvement and its implications for employment using firm-level paneldata collected in 11 citiesduringtheperiod 1995-2001. Wefind thathardened budget constraint and marketliberalization aretwo significantfactorscontributing to privatization, whileworkerredundancyand excessive debtshinderit. Privatization improvesfirm efficiency when the amountof private sharespasses a certain threshold. In addition, privatized SOEs maintain a lower rate of employment reduction and a highergrowth rate in average wage paymentcompared to pureSOEs. However, theyalso fire more workers than pureSOEsin the year of privatization.<Keywords>privatization transition economics firmefficiency

Metropolitan Housing Development in Urban Fringe Areas-A Case Study of Three Metropolitan Cities of South Africa: Johannesburg, Ekurhuleni and Tshwane

Purpose:The metropolitan cities of Johannesburg,Ekurhuleni and Tshwane play an important role in the economy of the Gauteng province in South Africa.The region constitutes to 22.4 percent of the total population of South Africa and has a strong presence and contributes in areas of manufacturing sector,financial and business services,retail and wholesale trade,etc.The rapid urban population,increase in the informal settlements and socio-economic opportunities has resulted in considerable urban sprawl in and around the urban fringe areas of these metropolitan cities.The urban fringe areas of these metros often come under the influence of rapid urbanization process and pressures.Coupled with the economical and potential land dynamics and lack of priority of spatial development guidelines,these areas attract rapid and haphazard development from communities and developers.Research Design/Methodology:This research is based on a qualitative approach through a comprehensive literature review that included content analysis of key documents on housing sector such as IDPs(Integrated Development Plans),Municipal Annual Reports,Growth Development Strategies,and among other sectoral documents on housing sector.Some of the key priority issues considered in the housing sector included:eradication of housing backlogs,spatial restructuring of housing,provision of choice in terms of location,tenure and housing typology.Findings:The current paper discusses the approaches of metropolitan housing development processes in three metropolitan cities of South Africa from Gauteng region,namely:Johannesburg,Ekurhuleni and Tshwane.The paper discusses the existing housing sectoral scenario along with the fringe areas in three cities with focus on:formal and informal settlements,housing segregation and the backlogs,current institutional arrangements,role of public private participation,and scope for alternate mechanisms.The paper concludes in discussion on sustainable development options for housing development in urban fringe areas.

Improving innovation and entrepreneurship education in higher institutions: the impact of "Mass Entrepreneurship and Innovation" education on undergraduates' entrepreneurial intentions

The exploration of the way"mass entrepreneurship and innovation"(MEI)education influences students'aspirations to become entrepreneurs has grown into an important area of analysis in studies related to higher education.This research intends to examine the consequences of MEI education on students'tendency towards entrepreneurship,and to put forward methods for augmenting the teaching of innovation and entrepreneurship in private higher educational establishments.To achieve this objective,questionnaires and semi-structured interviews were employed in the study,which involved a total of 197 students and five education experts.The statistical analysis of the questionnaire data revealed that MEI education was positively related to students'entrepreneurial intentions,and that both entrepreneurial experience and family entrepreneurial background played moderating roles in this relationship.The interview findings indicated that private universities could enhance educational reforms by designing talent training programs,developing diversified curricula,and developing more professional entrepreneurial platforms to encourage students'entrepreneurial intentions.This study offers fresh insights for improving and perfecting the mechanism of innovation and entrepreneurship education in private universities.

基于拍卖理论的动态多代理同类机调度算法

This paper addresses a multi-agent scheduling problem with uniform parallel machines owned by a resource agent and competing jobs with dynamic arrival times that belong to different consumer agents.All agents are self-interested and rational with the aim of maximizing their own objectives,resulting in intense resource competition among consumer agents and strategic behaviors of unwillingness to disclose private information.Within the context,a centralized scheduling approach is unfeasible,and a decentralized approach is considered to deal with the targeted problem.This study aims to generate a stable and collaborative solution with high social welfare while simultaneously accommodating consumer agents’preferences under incomplete information.For this purpose,a dynamic iterative auction-based approach based on a decentralized decision-making procedure is developed.In the proposed approach,a dynamic auction procedure is established for dynamic jobs participating in a realtime auction,and a straightforward and easy-to-implement bidding strategy without price is presented to reduce the complexity of bid determination.In addition,an adaptive Hungarian algorithm is applied to solve the winner determination problem efficiently.A theoretical analysis is conducted to prove that the proposed approach is individually rational and that the myopic bidding strategy is a weakly dominant strategy for consumer agents submitting bids.Extensive computational experiments demonstrate that the developed approach achieves high-quality solutions and exhibits considerable stability on largescale problems with numerous consumer agents and jobs.A further multi-agent scheduling problem considering multiple resource agents will be studied in future work.

Multi-party semi-quantum private comparison protocol of size relation based on two-dimensional Bell states

Currently,all quantum private comparison protocols based on two-dimensional quantum states can only compare equality,via using high-dimensional quantum states that it is possible to compare the size relation in existing work.In addition,it is difficult to manipulate high-dimensional quantum states under the existing conditions of quantum information processing,leading to low practicality and engineering feasibility of protocols for comparing size relation.Considering this situation,we propose an innovative protocol.The proposed protocol can make size comparison by exploiting more manageable two-dimensional Bell states,which significantly enhances its feasibility with current quantum technologies.Simultaneously,the proposed protocol enables multiple participants to compare their privacies with the semi-quantum model.The communication process of the protocol is simulated on the IBM Quantum Experience platform to verify its effectiveness.Security analysis shows that the proposed protocol can withstand common attacks while preserving the privacies of all participants.Thus,the devised protocol may provide an important reference for implementation of quantum private size comparison protocols.

Impact of correlated private signals on continuous-time insider trading

A model of continuous-time insider trading in which a risk-neutral in-sider possesses two imperfect correlated signals of a risky asset is studied.By conditional expectation theory and filtering theory,we first establish three lemmas:normal corre-lation,equivalent pricing and equivalent profit,which can guarantee to turn our model into a model with insider knowing full information.Then we investigate the impact of the two correlated signals on the market equilibrium consisting of optimal insider trading strategy and semi-strong pricing rule.It shows that in the equilibrium,(1)the market depth is constant over time;(2)if the two noisy signals are not linerly correlated,then all private information of the insider is incorporated into prices in the end while the whole information on the asset value can not incorporated into prices in the end;(3)if the two noisy signals are linear correlated such that the insider can infer the whole information of the asset value,then our model turns into a model with insider knowing full information;(4)if the two noisy signals are the same then the total ex ant profit of the insider is increasing with the noise decreasing,while down to O as the noise going up to infinity;(5)if the two noisy signals are not linear correlated then with one noisy signal fixed,the total ex ante profit of the insider is single-peaked with a unique minimum with respect to the other noisy signal value,and furthermore as the noisy value going to O it gets its maximum,the profit in the case that the real value is observed.

Impact of carbon disclosure on debt financing costs

Creditors,such as banks,often use disclosed environmental information to assess a company’s environmental risk and ensure the safety of debt funds.Consequently,carbon disclosures have become an important consideration for creditors when making investments.This study explores the relationship between carbon disclosure and debt financing costs using data on listed companies from 2008 to 2019.The results show that carbon disclosure can reduce the debt financing costs of enterprises,and that this influence is more significant for private companies than for state-owned enterprises.Instrumental variables and Propensity Score Matching(PSM)were used to evaluate the robustness of negative relationships.Furthermore,carbon disclosure has a more significant impact on debt costs with less environmental supervision pressure,weak residents’environmental awareness,and weak product market competition.These findings provide guidance for companies’carbon information disclosure and support the establishment of official carbon disclosure standards.

Enhancing Private Healthcare Effectiveness in Lagos State, Nigeria: An Overview of the Effect of Quality Improvement Initiatives and Implications for Sustainable Healthcare Delivery

Background: Nigeria, a nation grappling with rapid population growth, economic intricacies, and complex healthcare challenges, particularly in Lagos State, the economic hub and most populous state, faces the challenge of ensuring quality healthcare access. The overview of the effect of quality improvement initiatives in this paper focuses on private healthcare providers in Lagos State, Nigeria. The study assesses the impact of donor-funded quality improvement projects on these private healthcare facilities. It explores the level of participation, perceived support, and tangible effects of the initiatives on healthcare delivery within private healthcare facilities. It also examines how these initiatives influence patient inflow and facility ratings, and bring about additional benefits and improvements, provides insights into the challenges faced by private healthcare providers in implementing quality improvement projects and elicits recommendations for improving the effectiveness of such initiatives. Methods: Qualitative research design was employed for in-depth exploration, utilizing semi-structured interviews. Private healthcare providers in Lagos involved in the SP4FP Quality Improvement Project were purposively sampled for diversity. Face-to-face interviews elicited insights into participation, perceived support, and project effects. Questions covered participation levels, support perception, changes observed, challenges faced, and recommendations. Thematic analysis identified recurring themes from interview transcripts. Adherence to ethical guidelines ensured participant confidentiality and informed consent. Results: Respondents affirmed active involvement in the SP4FP Quality Improvement Project, echoing literature emphasizing private-sector collaboration with the public sector. While acknowledging positive influences on facility ratings, respondents highlighted challenges within the broader Nigerian healthcare landscape affecting patient numbers. Respondents cited tangible improvements, particularly in staff management and patient care processes, validating the positive influence of quality improvement projects. Financial constraints emerged as a significant challenge, aligning with existing literature emphasizing the pragmatic difficulties faced by private healthcare providers. Conclusions: This study illuminates the complex landscape of private healthcare provision in Lagos State, emphasizing the positive impact of donor-funded quality improvement projects. The findings provide nuanced insights, guiding policymakers, healthcare managers, and practitioners toward collaborative, sustainable improvements. As Nigeria progresses, these lessons will be crucial in shaping healthcare policies prioritizing population well-being.

FINE TUNING THE MARKET

Promoting social capital investment and mobilizing private enterprises are important tools to promote economic development,expand social employment,solve livelihood problems,and achieve common prosperity.However,in recent years,the growth rate of private investment has been dampened by the COVID-19pandemic and other negative factors,making the need to improve the vitality of private investment more dire.The Public-Private Partnership(PPP) mode has been an effective path to improve infrastructure and public service supply by attracting private capital to participate in the supply of public goods to better meet public demand and alleviate financial pressure on local governments.