Rural Telecommunications planning in a developing country is a complex process that has to consider the various interrelationships in a rural sociotechnical system. A primary function of telecommunications planning is the selection or design of the most appropriate technologies for the particular rural application. However, the issues involved in the selection and deployment of rural communicat...

The paper discusses the institutional reforms for rural electrification (RE) in Thailand and Bangladesh and analyses the impacts of private sector participation in electricity generation and tariff reforms on the poor in Thailand. RE program in Thailand, initiated in 1977, increased electricity access by rural households from 7% in early 70s to 97% by 2000. In Bangladesh the RE program, initiat...

Socioeconomic trends and developments within the U.S. healthcare system have challenged rural hospitals' ability to maintain adequate operating margins and offer needed services. However, some hospitals have fared better in this negative environment than have others. To clarify factors that distinguish the most viable rural Catholic hospitals from the least viable, our study identified a group ...

The New South Wales Department of Health (NSW Health) wishes to make appropriate use of casemix data as inputs to the determination of funding levels for small rural hospitals. However, other factors such as hospital size and degree of isolation might need to be taken into account. The study reported here involved correlation of actual expenditures with those predicted by use of a casemix model...

Formal financial institutions failed to reach the poorer sections of the rural society due to informational asymmetry, moral hazard and enforcement problems. The necessity of having alternative rural credit systems which will solve the problems of rural credit institutions is clearly warranted. Micro finance institutions are seen to have characteristics that help solve the problems moral hazard...