Social welfare aspects of information with special reference to news.

The information society thesis, according to which economically advanced nations are undergoing transformation into post-industrial, information-based societies, can, with caveats, be taken as a premise. Essentially empirical or predictive, this influential set of claims quickly gives rise to major normative issues. The paper asks how, as part of a prospective normative theory of the information society, information may be shown to contribute to social goals in general and social welfare in particular. Given the diverse range of referents of the term 'information' in the context of the information society debate, the paper focuses on news as a form of information whose communication is widely held to be important to society. The problem is how to quantify or otherwise prove this intuition. It is suggested that a fusion of welfare economics and the economics of information may yield a solution. The paper is designed to be exploratory, offering a potential line of inquiry for the future research and policy agenda of information society studies.

A life cycle framework for governance of Intermodal terminals; planning, operations and strategic management.

This chapter establishes a framework for the governance of intermodal terminals throughout their life cycle, based on the product life cycle. The framework covers the initial planning by the public sector, the public/private split in funding and ownership, the selection of an operator, ensuring fair access to all users, and finally reconcessioning the terminal to a new operator, managing the handover and maintaining the terminal throughout its life cycle. This last point is especially important as industry conditions change and the terminal's role in the transport network comes under threat, either by a lack of demand or by increased demand requiring expansion, redesign and reinvestment. Each stage of the life cycle framework is operationalised based on empirical examples drawn from research by the authors on intermodal terminal planning and funding, the tender process and concession and operation contracts. In future the framework can be applied in additional international contexts to form a basis for transport cost analysis, logistics planning and government policy.