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Reimagine the future of the internet All our devices and gadgets-from our refrigerators to our home security systems, vacuum cleaners, and stereos-are going online, just like our computers did. But once we've successfully connected our devices to the internet, do we have any hope of keeping them, and ourselves, safe from the dangers that lurk beneath the digital waters? In If It's Smart, It's Vulnerable, veteran cybersecurity professional Mikko Hypponen delivers an eye-opening exploration of the best-and worst-things the internet has given us. From instant connectivity between any two points on the globe to organized ransomware gangs, the net truly has been a mixed blessing. In this book, the author explores the transformative potential of the future of the internet, as well as those things that threaten its continued existence: government surveillance, censorship, organized crime, and more. Readers will also find: Insightful discussions of how law enforcement and intelligence agencies operate on the internet Fulsome treatments of how money became data and the impact of the widespread use of mobile supercomputing technology Explorations of how the internet has changed the world, for better and for worse Engaging stories from Mikko's 30-year career in infosecPerfect for anyone seeking a thought-provoking presentation of some of the most pressing issues in cybersecurity and technology, If It's Smart, It's Vulnerable will also earn a place in the libraries of anyone interested in the future of the internet.

The Schumpeterian process of 'creative destruction' is an essential ingredient of a dynamic economy. In many countries around the world, however, this process is weakened by pervasive regulation of product and factor markets. This book documents the regulatory obstacles faced by firms, particularly in developing countries, and assesses their implications for firm renewal and macroeconomic performance. Combining a variety of methodological approaches--analytical and empirical, micro and macroeconomic, single- and cross-country-- the book provides evidence that streamlining the regulatory framework would have a significant social pay-off, particularly in developing countries that are also burdened by weak governance. The book's chapters trace out analytically and empirically the links between microeconomic policies and distortions, on the one hand, and aggregate performance in terms of productivity, growth and volatility, on the other. The volume adds to a novel but increasingly influential literature that seeks to understand macroeconomic phenomena from a microeconomic perspective, and derive the relevant lessons for development policy. Such literature is still fairly scarce in the case of industrial countries, and virtually in its infancy for developing countries.

Background It is widely accepted that intellectual property legal requirements such as patents and data exclusivity can affect access to medicines, but to date there has not been a comprehensive review of the empirical evidence on this topic. The World Trade Organization’s Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) requires Member States to implement minimum standards of intellectual property protection including patents for pharmaceutical products, but also contains ‘flexibilities’ designed to address barriers to access to medicines. National intellectual property laws can also include TRIPS-plus rules that go beyond what is required by TRIPS. We aimed to systematically review literature that measures the impact of intellectual property rules on access to medicines, whether implemented as a result of TRIPS, TRIPS-plus provisions in other trade agreements, or unilateral policy decisions. Methods We searched Proquest, SCOPUS, Web of Science, PubMed, JSTOR, Westlaw and Lexis Nexis. Peer reviewed articles, government reports and other grey literature were included. Articles were eligible for inclusion if they were quantitative, in English, included a measure of cost, price, availability of or access to medicines, were about intellectual property or data exclusivity rules and published between January 1995 and October 2020. Ninety-one studies met our inclusion criteria. We systematically reviewed the studies’ findings and evaluated their quality using a modified quality assessment template. Results and conclusion Five broad overarching themes and 11 subthemes were identified based on the articles’ foci. They were: trade agreements (divided into EU FTAs and those that include the USA); use of TRIPS flexibilities (divided into compulsory licencing and parallel importation); patent expiry/generic entry/generic pathway (divided into comparative studies and single country studies); patent policies (also divided into comparative studies and single country studies) and TRIPS-plus rules (divided into data exclusivity, patent term extensions and secondary patenting). Most studies focused not on specific trade agreements, but on TRIPS-plus provisions, which can also be found within some trade agreements. The main finding of this review is that the stronger pharmaceutical monopolies created by TRIPs-plus intellectual property rules are generally associated with increased drug prices, delayed availability and increased costs to consumers and governments. There is evidence that TRIPS flexibilities can facilitate access to medicines although their use is limited to date. There were few studies that included resource poor settings, signalling a need for greater research in such settings where the impact on access to medicines is likely to be more damaging.

Cross-and up-selling in inbound call centers is a growing business practice, with the promise of enhanced revenue generation and customer retention. Yet firms struggle to create conditions that are conducive to customer service representatives' (CSRs') concurrent engagement in service and sales. By developing a framework of the antecedents and performance consequences of aligned sales and customer service provision, this study advances understanding of ambidexterity at the employee level. The framework receives strong support from an empirical study based on CSRs' survey responses and matched performance data. A CSR's locomotion orientation facilitates ambidextrous behavior and interacts positively with an assessment orientation. However, team identification and bounded discretion impair this valuable interplay. Ambidextrous behavior also increases customer satisfaction and sales performance but decreases efficiency. Nevertheless, the overall performance effect is positive.

Regulatory capital guidelines allow for loan loss reserves to be added back as capital. Our evidence suggests that the influence of loan loss reserves added back as regulatory capital (hereafter referred to as “add-backs”) on bank risk cannot be explained by either economic principles underlying the notion of capital or accounting principles underlying the recording of reserves. Specifically, we observe that, in sharp contrast to the economic notion of capital as a buffer against bank failure risk, add-backs are positively associated with the risk of bank failure during the recent economic crisis. Furthermore, the positive association of add-backs with bank failure risk is concentrated among cases in which the add-backs are highly likely to increase a bank’s total regulatory capital. The evidence cannot thus be fully explained by accounting principles either, since the role of loan loss reserves according to those principles does not depend on whether the reserves generate a regulatory capital increase. Additional analysis suggests that the observed influence of loan loss reserves on bank failure risk may be an unintended consequence of their regulatory treatment as capital.

The Africa Infrastructure Country Diagnostic (AICD) has produced continent-wide analysis of many aspects of Africa's infrastructure challenge. The main findings were synthesized in a flagship report titled Africa's Infrastructure: a time for transformation, published in November 2009. Meant for policy makers, that report necessarily focused on the high-level conclusions. It attracted widespread media coverage feeding directly into discussions at the 2009 African Union Commission Heads of State Summit on Infrastructure. Although the flagship report served a valuable role in highlighting the main findings of the project, it could not do full justice to the richness of the data collected and technical analysis undertaken. There was clearly a need to make this more detailed material available to a wider audience of infrastructure practitioners. Hence the idea of producing four technical monographs, such as this one, to provide detailed results on each of the major infrastructure sectors, information and communication technologies (ICT), power, transport, and water, as companions to the flagship report. These technical volumes are intended as reference books on each of the infrastructure sectors. They cover all aspects of the AICD project relevant to each sector, including sector performance, gaps in financing and efficiency, and estimates of the need for additional spending on investment, operations, and maintenance. Each volume also comes with a detailed data appendix, providing easy access to all the relevant infrastructure indicators at the country level, which is a resource in and of itself.

We examine the relation between four dimensions of national culture and earnings quality of banks using a sample of banks from 39 countries. Our main analysis, which focuses on the pre-financial crisis period 1993-2006, indicates that banks in high individualism high masculinity, and low uncertainty avoidance societies manage earnings to just-meet-or-beat the prior year's earnings. In tests of income smoothing through loan loss provisions, we find that banks in high individualism, high power distance, and low uncertainty avoidance societies report smoother earnings. Our exploratory analysis of the effects of national culture on accounting outcomes during the financial crisis period 2007-2008 indicates that cultures that encourage higher risk-taking experienced more bank troubles in the form of larger losses or larger loan loss provisions.

Most concerns about delegation are put in terms of the handover of legislative power to federal agencies and the magnitude of the legislative policy decisions made by such agencies. Likewise, most reform proposals, such as the Congressional Review Act and the proposed REINS Act, address these gap-filling, democratic deficit concerns. The same is true of the judicially created nondelegation canons, such as the major questions doctrine and other clear statement rules. This Article addresses a different, underexplored dimension of the delegation problem: the temporal complications of congressional delegation. In other words, broad congressional delegations of authority at one time period become a source of authority for agencies to take action at a later time that was wholly unanticipated by the enacting Congress or could no longer receive legislative support. This problem has taken on added significance in the current era of congressional inaction. To address this distinct temporal problem of delegation, we suggest that Congress revive the practice of regular reauthorization of statutes that govern federal regulatory action. In some circumstances, this will require Congress to add reauthorization incentives, such as sun-setting provisions. In other regulatory contexts, Congress may well decide that the costs of mandatory reauthorization outweigh the benefits. Nevertheless, we argue that Congress should more regularly use this longstanding legislative tool to mitigate the democratic deficits that accompany broad delegations of lawmaking authority to federal agencies and spur more regular legislative engagement with federal regulatory policy. A return to reauthorization would also strengthen the partnership between Congress and the administrative state as well as mitigate some of the major concerns that have been raised in recent years regarding Chevron deference.

The land development process in New Zealand is criticised for causing delays in the delivery of adequate housing. These delays upset the demand and supply equilibrium, leading to housing shortages, expensive builds and rentals. This study investigates the challenges in land development, to ascertain the factors that are limiting its efficiency as a major catalyst to housing provision. An understanding of the complexities of the development process could enable the suggestion of feasible solutions for achieving housing goals. A two-stage process was adopted to achieve this study objective. In stage one, a critical review of relevant literature helped to identify 48 measurement items. Those items were included in a questionnaire survey in the second stage, to gather data from stakeholders involved in land development process in New Zealand. Using relative importance index (RII) method, nine significant challenges were identified, which were then categorised and discussed in accordance with the construction stakeholder groups that are responsible for creating those challenges. The nine major challenges are: delay in reviews and approval of documents; scope change; lengthy consent application processes; late response to queries by regulatory authorities; poor interaction between regulatory authorities; poor coordination within regulatory authorities; poor planning and scheduling; design errors and slow progress during design development. Findings of this study highlight the need for the development of proper workplan for consent processing, reasonable factoring of the risks associated with scope changes in the land development process, and the enhancement of project management skills of land development contractors.

Research on Public Perception on Existing Provisions of Concerned Authorities of Nepal Stock Market has the specific objective to identify and assess the public perception on existing provisions of concerned authorities of Nepal Stock Market and suggestions for the concerned authorities. The exploratory sequential mixed research design has been the base for the research. Researcher used focus group discussion and survey for the primary and annual reports for the secondary data collection. The researcher collected respondents' views using the dichotomous and rank scale in the survey through the samples drawn using stratified random sampling for the primary data collection. The triangulation of qualitative and quantitative analyses conducted separately concluded the results. The qualitative analysis used respondents' idea, and experience collection and generalization whereas, quantitative analysis used statistical approach.                 The survey found more than 40 percent investors invest without analyzing the market and stock price determinants. The focus group discussion had similar conclusion on the issue. The survey found 44 percent respondents liked the existing laws and policies related to the stock investment in Nepal which got acceptance from the focus group discussion accordingly. The survey found 58 percent respondents like the existing roles of regulatory and controlling bodies; NEPSE and SEBON. The survey and focus group discussion concluded that the organization listed in NEPSE are to manage interaction program with stakeholders and adapt sound accounting and auditing standard for investors' interest protection. The companies are to be able to catch market sentiments timely despite quantitative factors and organize the interaction program about the stock investment program with potential shareholders at their reach regularly. Research concluded that the regulatory bodies are to develop reward punishment, instruct listed companies for disclosing their information timely, and prompt rule to the broker. Government has to establish investors' protection fund for the investment empowerment, and prompt supervision mechanism to regulate the investment. Few respondents suggested for the incorporation of another secondary market and extension of timing of security trading with one day policy for the future development of competitiveness in the secondary stock market of Nepal.