Many universities and other non-profit organizations started dial-up Internet access as a valueadded service to their respective communities. The implementation and maintenance of these services becomes a nontrivial task, requiring large annual budgets to keep these systems up and running. The mandate for these non-profit entities is to recover the costs of providing their value added services ...

CLOUD computing has introduced a major shift in the IT delivery model by offering computing resources for hosting applications as a utility. This helps businesses and organizations to access advanced IT facilities offered by cloud providers without the expensive up-front investments necessary to establish their own infrastructure. In this context, significant research efforts have already been ...

As agents for their patients, providers often make treatment decisions on behalf of patients, and their choices can affect health outcomes. However, providers operate within a network of relationships and are agents not only for their patients, but also other health sector actors, such as their employer, the Ministry of Health, and pharmaceutical suppliers. Providers' stated preferences for the...

Cloud computing has introduced a major shift in the IT delivery model by offering computing resources for hosting applications as a utility. This helps businesses and organizations to access advanced IT facilities offered by cloud providers without the expensive up-front investments necessary to establish their own infrastructure. In this context, significant research efforts have already been ...

Today's large scale networks such as the Internet emerge from the interconnection of privately owned networks and serve heterogeneous users with different service needs. The service providers of these networks are interested in maximizing their profit. Since the existing pricing scheme cannot satisfy their needs, the service providers are looking for new pricing mechanisms. However, designing a...

BACKGROUND Unintended pregnancies lead to unsafe abortions, which are a leading cause of preventable maternal mortality among young women in Uganda. There is a discrepancy between the desire to prevent pregnancy and actual contraceptive use. Health care providers' perspectives on factors influencing contraceptive use and service provision to young people aged 15-24 in two rural districts in Uga...

We examine the effects of private sector contracting on public employment using panel data from the Census of Governments and International City/County Management Association surveys conducted in 1997 and 2002. We model decisions about contracting and the size of the public workforce as jointly-dependent decisions affecting both full-time and part-time employment. Our results from a seemingly u...