This paper challenges conventional views of violent religious extremism, particularly those that emphasize militant theology. We offer an alternative analysis that helps explain the persistent demand for religion, the different types of religious that naturally arise, and the special attributes of the “sectarian” type. Sects are adept at producing club goods – both spiritual and material. Where...

1 MOTIVATION With the increasing pressure that companies are experiencing as markets become more global and competition intensifies, information technology (IT) continues to play a critical role to speed up operations and to cut costs. By enabling new business concepts, it also helps organizations to react quickly and efficiently in order to keep up with changing market requirements. Procuremen...

A synopsis of charge and payment trends of Medicare physicians and other noninstitutional suppliers of goods and services is provided in this article. Included are longitudinal variations in charges for services, trends in program expenditures, and patterns in beneficiary liabilities.

OBJECTIVES To investigate perceptions of family health service authorities and medical audit advisory groups of advisory groups' involvement in clinical audit and wider quality issues; communication with the authorities; and manager satisfaction. DESIGN National postal questionnaire survey in 1994. SETTING All family health services authority districts in England and Wales. SUBJECTS Chief...

The International telecommunications market is particularly interesting for two reasons. On the one hand, it was the first market to be “de facto” liberalised and was characterised by strong competition, powerful buyers and therefore important price decreases. On the other hand, it called for innovative behaviour from both suppliers and business customers in order to take into account this new ...

Over the past few years, reverse auctions have attracted a lot of attention in the AI community. They offer the prospect of more efficiently matching suppliers and producers in the face of changing market conditions. Prior research has generally ignored the temporal and finite capacity constraints under which reverse auctioneers typically operate. In this paper, we consider the problem faced by...