Public administrations are increasingly deploying algorithmic systems to facilitate the application, execution, and enforcement of regulation, a practice that can be denoted as algorithmic regulation. While their reliance on digital technology is not new, both the scale at which they automate administrative acts and the importance of the decisions they delegate to algorithmic tools is on the rise. In this chapter, I contextualize this phenomenon and discuss the implementation of algorithmic regulation across several public sector domains. I then assess some of the ethical and legal conundrums that public administrations face when outsourcing their tasks to such systems and provide an overview of the legal framework that governs this practice, with a particular focus on the European Union. This framework encompasses not only constitutional and administrative law but also data protection law and AI-specific law. Finally, I offer some take-aways for public administrations to consider when seeking to deploy algorithmic regulation.

Chapter 3 explores the multiplicity of ordering dynamics that are integral to the workings of the station, and the complex and contingent constellations that emerge from this multiplicity. Expanding on the notions of Guyer’s ‘niche economy’ and Geertz’s ‘involution’, it discusses the institutional arrangements through which people create and accommodate themselves to the hustle as situation, a process that reproduces the complexities that form the social space and social order of the station. The ethnography presented in this chapter focuses on the changing occupational organisation of the station’s transport trades. These shifting arrangements, it is argued, are characterised by involuting growth within a niche economy logic, and they offer a window onto the constituents of hustle as a distinct mode of production and organisation that prevails in many spheres of African cities.

Firms use algorithms for important decisions in areas from pricing strategy to product design. Increased price transparency and availability of personal data, combined with ever more sophisticated machine learning algorithms, has turbocharged their use. Algorithms can be a procompetitive force, such as when used to undercut competitors or to improve recommendations. But algorithms can also distort competition, as when firms use them to collude or to exclude competitors. EU competition law, in particular its provisions on restrictive agreements and abuse of dominance (Articles 101–102 TFEU), prohibits such practices, but novel anticompetitive practices – when algorithms collude autonomously for example – may escape its grasp. This chapter assesses to what extent anticompetitive algorithmic practices are covered by EU competition law, examining horizontal agreements (collusion), vertical agreements (resale price maintenance), exclusionary conduct (ranking), and exploitative conduct (personalized pricing).

Biodiversity is vital to humanity, and its continued existence cuts across the rights and duties of states and their obligations pursuant to a plethora of international environmental agreements. There is a wide array of international and regional treaties focusing on biodiversity and conservation issues. Several Middle East and North Africa (MENA) countries have signed, ratified, and, in some instances, domesticated some of these treaties into their national legal systems. However, notwithstanding the avalanche of national and international mechanisms on biodiversity, several barriers are militating against the successful implementation of the regime on biodiversity in many MENA countries. This chapter argues that reliance on environmental law education can be one of the strategies to improve the implementation of biodiversity treaties across the MENA region. Drawing salient lessons from emerging best practices on environmental law education across the region, this chapter examines the role of environmental law education in advancing biodiversity and nature conservation. It discusses legal and institutional gaps that hinder the profusion of environmental law education on biodiversity in the MENA region and key reforms necessary to address such gaps.

This chapter provides a conceptual overview of the nature and scope of biodiversity and nature conservation law and policy in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. It explores the different sources of law that underpin biodiversity management in the region. It then discusses the character, status, and force of the different sources, including the interrelationships between them.

Throughout Part II we have focused on determining and understanding the value within firms on both sides of the balance sheet. Chapters 9 and 10 focus on valuing the assets of the firm—understanding how to value the entire firm (its total assets) as well as individual projects undertaken within the firm. Chapter 13 focuses on understanding the value of the liabilities and equity of the firm, and how this side of the balance sheet can be structured through a firm’s capital structure. Our workhorse tool set for analyzing these issues was discounted cash flow (DCF) analysis. In this chapter, we introduce a different valuation tool, option pricing analysis, as an improved valuation framework that allows us to explore these topics.

Conlusion: Summary of findings

This chapter tells Amethyst’s story. Amethyst is an Aboriginal and South Sea Islander young woman with cognitive disability. Amethyst is not her real name. Amethyst was abused many times as a child and a young adult. Her story can tell us a lot about what needs to change for young people with cognitive disability. We need to understand that abuse affects a person’s whole life, their family, and their world.

The chapter develops probabilistic methods for pricing and dynamic replication in an arbitrage-free market, including an introduction to continuous-time methodology.

Landscapes have a crucial role in bridging nature and culture and are therefore essential for biodiversity and ecosystem integrity preservation. As they are ingrained in regional customs and belief systems, they serve as a useful tool for biodiversity conservation. The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) represents a vast region of many natural and cultural landscapes. This chapter presents the question “what are the causative factors of landscape alterations and potential threats to biodiversity in the MENA region?” An integrative review was conducted to provide actions to promote the development of effective policies and strategies for landscape and biodiversity conservation in the region. The chapter highlights natural/spatial, policy/institutional, socio-economic, technological, and cultural factors as the main influences on land changes in both regions. The chapter highlights priority actions in the areas of increased education and awareness, collaboration, and policy integration to effectively promote landscape and biodiversity conservation in the MENA region.

Burns are a common injury throughout the world and are mostly preventable. A moment of inattention by a guardian or an older child playing with fire can lead to a lifetime of burn care. Children have a higher incidence of burns than adults, although most burns are small. Burns over 10% require formal fluid resuscitation to mitigate the effects of systemic oedema and burn shock. Definitive treatment involves non-operative techniques, such as application of dressings, or for larger or deeper injuries, operations to debride the wound and apply skin grafts. Each burn generates background, breakthrough and procedural pain that must be managed effectively. Small burns may be complicated by infection, larger burns by multiple organ failure. The outcomes are generally good, and children can survive and thrive even after very large injuries. Anaesthetists are involved in all aspects of burn care once a child reaches hospital, and they are an essential part of the multidisciplinary burn care team. The aim of this team is to deliver faster healing and better pain control, and to prevent complications. This chapter describes current burns care for children in the United Kingdom.

The actors that are active in the financial world process vast amounts of information, starting from customer data and account movements over market trading data to credit underwriting or money-laundering checks. It is one thing to collect and store these data, yet another challenge to interpret and make sense of them. AI helps with both, for example, by checking databases or crawling the Internet in search of relevant information, by sorting it according to predefined categories or by finding its own sorting parameter. It is hence unsurprising that AI has started to fundamentally change many aspects of finance. This chapter takes AI scoring and creditworthiness assessments as an example for how AI is employed in financial services (Section 16.2), for the ethical challenges this raises (Section 16.3), and for the legal tools that attempt to adequately balance advantages and challenges of this technique (Section 16.4). It closes with a look at scoring beyond the credit situation (Section 16.5).

This chapter examines Kazakhstan’s efforts to reform its teacher compensation system and investigates whether the substantial salary increase for teachers in Kazakhstan between 2020 and 2023 has improved the quality of teaching and educational outcomes. The traditional “Stavka system” of teacher remuneration, where pay is based on teaching hours, is explored along with other limitations of the system, such as income instability and reduced motivation for non-teaching tasks. The reform aimed to address these issues by introducing a new wage system with a hierarchy of teacher qualifications, providing incentives for complex teaching, and acknowledging the role of special working conditions. However, this system faced challenges in incentivizing non-teaching tasks and addressing disparities in teachers’ workload. The reform’s impacts are then evaluated. Initial observations suggest a rise in the profession’s prestige and interest among school graduates, but issues remain. These include insufficient financial incentives for extra-lesson activities and the new system’s limited effect on young teachers’ pay. While salary increases are vital, they alone are insufficient to enhance educational outcomes. The need for nuanced policies, transparency, and professional consensus is emphasized to ensure that reforms effectively incentivize high-quality teaching.

This chapter delves into the crucial step of biomass pretreatment and its significance in a biorefinery. It begins by introducing a comprehensive definition of a biorefinery and the importance of pretreatment in biorefining. Various pretreatment methods, their advantages, disadvantages, and accompanying structural modifications to the biomass are explained. The general focus is on the impact of pretreatment on enzyme hydrolysis, an essential step in biomass conversion to renewable sugars for producing various bioproducts, including biofuels and biopolymers such as bioplastics. The chapter further discusses how pretreatments, if not balanced, could also contribute to downstream processing challenges, such as the generation of inhibitors. The chapter provides a comprehensive guide to grasping the necessity of pretreatment in biomass utilization for sustainable biorefining.