Federalism,distributive politics and representative democracy

We analyze federal systems of government in which local public policies are financed by general taxation. In a decentralized political system there is, in each region, a vote to elect a local representative while in a centralized political system a single representative is elected by a federal vote. It is shown that under decentralization, voters strategically elect liberal representatives so as to nullify any element of cooperation between representatives in the decision-making stage. Thus, there is a trade-off between the budgetary externality and a "policy closer to the people", but the democratic choice is biased towards decentralization.     

The National Health Service Manager,Engineer and Father? A Deconstruction

This paper presents the findings of deconstructing a short extract from a report written by a National Health Service Trust chief executive.
Changes in National Health Service management since the early 1980s are briefly discussed. This is followed by a theoretical discussion of deconstruction and metaphorization. The text is analysed focusing on the 'binary opposites' reason and emotion. It is argued that reason is given hierarchical pre-eminence and that emotion is hidden or marginalized but that both concepts are central in order to arrive at an understanding of the text.
The chief executive appears to constitute his role in ways which might be characterized as engineering (reason) and as traditional fatherhood (emotion). Metaphors in the text are used in order to provide evidence to support these characterizations. One implication which is particularly highlighted is that management in this text is seen as a distinctively masculine practice – perhaps surprisingly within what is presumed to be the caring and supportive environment of a health care organization.
The paper ends with some reflexive reflections on the analysis.     

Optimale revisietijd

Optimum period of overhaul, a case-study
A general formula is given, when to proceed to an overhaul in such a way that the costs of wear and those of overhaul together will be a minimum (par. 2). In par. 3 the practical solution for cells in electrolysis is discussed. First a nonstochastic model is considered, then the more realistic stochastic model. It is proved that an overhaul is not indicated after a certain space of time or after a certain increase in the costs, but when a certain absolute level of the costs (corresponding with a certain electrical tension) is reached irrespective of what went before. A formula (14) to this end is given. Attention is also paid to the problem of the numerical evaluation.     

Tenure choice and the riskiness of non-housing consumption

This paper analyzes a household's choice of housing tenure within a dynamic utility maximization model that yields simple analytical results under uncertainty of income, housing prices, and rents. Given a housing consumption plan, we show that a decrease in the covariance between a household's earnings and housing rents increases the likelihood of ownership. A household who plans to remain in its home over a long period is more likely to own; a household who plans to remain in its home over a short period is more likely to rent. The higher the covariance between the user cost of a home and that of other properties a household is likely to consider in the future, the more likely the household is to own this home. These predictions of our model find support in recent empirical studies.     

A simple and effective scanning rule for a multi-channel system

We consider a multi-channel system in which one apparatus makes a sequence of observations, one at a time. By means of scanning, i.e. selecting a channel to be analyzed at any instant and deciding to stop at some stage, it is required to determine the channel in which there is the signal with prescribed constraints on error probabilities. A simple scanning rule, based on a cyclic application of a sequential probability ratio test (SPRT) is proposed for this problem. It is proved that in the case of Brownian motion, the expected scanning time of this rule is equal to the one of the optimal scanning rule (which is known only for this case). The simple structure of this rule permits to obtain corrected Brownian approximations for its characteristics in the case of exponential family of distributions. The same procedure is used in multi-channel change point problem.     

Explikation von implizitem Wissen: Stand der Forschung zu Barrieren und Lösungsansätzen

Knowledge management is essential to successful modern organizations. Often times uncovering hidden knowledge is seen as the central challenge in strengthening a company’s competiveness. Therefore a lot of knowledge is collected in extensive storages today. But a substantial part of knowledge is concealed in the minds of staff. That is why the explication of tacit knowledge becomes more and more important. A lot of companies are confronted with a lot of barriers when trying to uncover implicit knowledge, though. As a result the goal of this paper is to identify these barriers structurally to unveil the hidden skills and present different solutions to negotiate these barriers and to be competitive on the market.     

HRM and Indian epistemologies: A review and avenues for future research

India is emerging as a super power, slated to be among the world's five largest economies and viewed by international investors, business conglomerates and tertiary education providers as a land of opportunity. A database search since the opening up of the Indian economy in 1991 reveals a slowly increasing number of scholarly articles on HRM, with a steep rise from the year 2000 onwards. While it is acknowledged that the field of HRM is a broad area, there is currently a dearth of research in specific HRM practices and policies in India to warrant a focus on only one area. Hence the primary objective of this article is to present a scholarly survey of important research literatures in the area of HRM in India, and to offer avenues for future research. To this end this article garners, integrates and discusses research on HRM in India with a focus primarily on the past fifteen years. It is within this complexity that research on India and its workforce is presented by illuminating HRM as embedded in the Indian environment with its intricate epistemologies and transitions in a period of dynamic change.     

Stackelberg leadership and transfers in private provision of public goods

We consider transfers in a Stackelberg game of private provision of a public good. It turns out that the agent who is the follower in the process of making voluntary contributions to a public good may have an incentive to make monetary transfers to the Stackelberg leader even in a situation where neither has a comparative advantage in making contributions to the public good. The Stackelberg leader is willing to accept such transfers if the actual contribution game is fully non-cooperative because the transfer generates a Pareto superior outcome. If the contributions in the Stackelberg equilibrium is the threat point of a possible cooperative Nash bargaining game, the Stackelberg leader will refuse to accept the transfer if she can. Received: 30 June 1995 / Accepted: 18 February 1997     

RENEWABLE RESOURCE AND CAPITAL ACCUMULATION UNDER UNCERTAINTY

An economy endowed with a renewable natural resource and physical capital is considered in order to examine the characteristics of possible transformation from natural to man-made capital, as a potential means of surviving over long periods of time if the natural resource may be depleted or fall short of certain sustainable levels. Natural resource together with physical capital is utilized to produce a commodity that is either to be sold in a market to earn sales revenue or invested to accumulate physical capital. The reserve size of resource and the production technology are both subject to uncertainties that are modeled by Wiener processes. The Wiener process is used to express the intrinsic nature of uncertainty for a long planning horizon such as on natural resources, in which distant futures are more difficult to foresee than the near future. It is shown that there exists a steady-state equilibrium in this economy under certainty and that, under some plausible conditions, the expected rate of change in resource harvest over time under uncertainty is less than the rate under certainty, while that of product sales is not affected by uncertainty.     

Entrepreneurship and the prospects of development in the West Bank

The study is a survey research designed to find out how a specific group of people perceives entrepreneurship and its relationship to economic growth. The group, composed entirely of economics and business administration majors in their last semester of the undergraduate programme, represents a crucial segment of the resource pool of future entrepreneurs iri the country. Hence, their perceptions of and attitude towards entrepreneurial activity is a significant determinant in the decision to launch business ventures should the opportunity arise.

The results of the study reveal a reserved managerial perception of entrepl:eneunhip among the majority of the respondents. The general reaction indicates a lack of readiness to take risks in an uncertain environment. The implication is that a change in perception, spurred on by a re-design of the academic programme in economics and business, is called for if there is to be any serious attempt to enhance the chances of economic growth in the region.     

Convexity and duality properties of a quadratic intraregional location model

This paper has two main purposes. The first one is to analyse the convexity and duality properties of a quadratic intraregional location model that has been developed for long-term indicative planning in the Stockholm region. The second one is to review the results of Koopmans and Beckmann (1957) about the inadequacy of a linear price system in sustaining an optimal assignment of plants to locations when the costs of transporting intermediary commodities are taken into consideration. At the outset a model is formulated which is a transposition of a continuous Koopmans-Beckmann model into the urban scene. It is shown that this quadratic programming model is non-convex in all practical cases of interest, due to the simple fact that transportation costs increase with distance. A modification of the model is proposed in which the centralising transportation cost criterion is traded of against a decentralising so called congestion cost which penalizes over-exploitation of urban space. It is shown that the modified model tends to be convex. In the light of these results Kuhn- Tucker theory is used to derive a set of conditions that will ensure that the optimal solution is stable relative to all potential moves by individual decision-makers. This result forms the basis for the conclusion that the failure of the price system in the Koopmans-Beckmann model is rather due to properties of the quadratic criterion function than the integral restrictions on the variables.     

On domain modelling of the service system with its application to enterprise information systems

Information systems are a kind of service systems and they are throughout every element of a modern industrial and business system, much like blood in our body. Types of information systems are heterogeneous because of extreme uncertainty in changes in modern industrial and business systems. To effectively manage information systems, modelling of the work domain (or domain) of information systems is necessary. In this paper, a domain modelling framework for the service system is proposed and its application to the enterprise information system is outlined. The framework is defined based on application of a general domain modelling tool called function-context-behaviour-principle-state-structure (FCBPSS). The FCBPSS is based on a set of core concepts, namely: function, context, behaviour, principle, state and structure and system decomposition. Different from many other applications of FCBPSS in systems engineering, the FCBPSS is applied to both infrastructure and substance systems, which is novel and effective to modelling of service systems including enterprise information systems. It is to be noted that domain modelling of systems (e.g. enterprise information systems) is a key to integration of heterogeneous systems and to coping with unanticipated situations facing to systems.     

Analysis of children’s interest in books and their reading levels depending on the education status of family

The reading rate is an important indicator of the development level of a country. The fundamental condition of being a developed country is having a sufficiently educated workforce, which, in turn, is directly related to reading abilities and habits. In modern society, which has been termed the “information age”, the fastest way to acquire knowledge is through reading. Reading habits are initially formed within the family. Subsequently, the desired reading objectives can be achieved through the positive contribution of the school and the child’s environment. A child with developed reading skills will have the targeted accumulation of knowledge and will be suitably positioned to attain success in their future education and professional lives. The ability to reach this objective easily is directly related to the guidance and encouragement of families in this regard. The results of this study indicate that there is a strong correlation between the levels of education of parents in the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus and the reading habits that are given to children. For example, the results revealed that the children of 27 families with university and higher education levels read a total of 115 books, which is an average of 4.25 books per child on a monthly basis, whereas this figure was found to be 42 books, or an average of 1.82 in the 23 families with an education at high school level or below. The general purpose of the study is to determine the relationship between the reading habits of children and the education levels of their parents as well as the level of awareness of families in this respect. This is a qualitative study. The aim is to obtain in-depth and detailed data. The research is based on a case study, which is a qualitative research model. The examined case is that of North Cyprus.     

WORLDOUTLOOK

German monetary unification is expected to result in a major expansion in autonomous demand from East Germany. In economic terms this is equivalent to a fiscal shock to West Germany broadly similar to that experienced in the US in the early years of Mr. Reagan's Presidency. Led by the Bundes bank, the monetary authorities' response is again likely to be a tightening of policy, leading to several years of high real interest rates. Overall, the combined monetary-fiscal shock should strengthen growth with only moderate increases in inflation. Germany is expected to grow very rapidly in the -per cent range for several years, with only a slight upturn in inflation. Japan, after a pause over the next year, should be able to return to its under lying growth path fairly quickly. However the US situation is more precarious. FUN adjustment from the previous Reagan shock has not yet taken place, leaving the US vulnerably dependent on increasingly scarce imported capital. In the absence of a significant *peace dividend: the result is the necessity of continued tight policy and sluggish growth in the American economy. US growth stays around 2 per cent, but this allows a substantial reduction in the current account deficit.     

The Roles of Equilibrium, Optimality, Maximization and Discontent in Decision-Making Processes

A bstract . The concept of equilibrium plays a pivotal role in the neoclassical maximization theory. Equilibrium, or balance of forces, is an ethically neutral term, while optimum is a position considered by the decision-maker as the most desirable, according to some predetermined criteria of optimality. Disequilibrium can be defined as a divergence between the actual and the desired performance. Within this context, the optimum position is attained when the ideal and actual values of the crucial variables measuring performance coincide. Disequilibrium analysis can be expressed in terms of the theory of discontent. Socio-economic change caused by human decisions and actions is always rooted in discontent, which leads to determination to act. This determination, or will , is one necessary condition for change. The other necessary condition is the use of power to close the discontent gap. The coincidence of power to act and will to use it is a sufficient condition for change. To what extent a new equilibrium balancing aspirations and attainments is established depends on the relationship between the rate of change in the level of aspiration and the rate of change in the level of attainment. The theory of discontent has a much broader application to economics which is elaborated.     

Developing a multivariate approach to monitor fuzzy quality profiles

Referring to several applications in which the response quality characteristic is fuzzy, this paper studies how the profile functional relationship between a fuzzy response variable and a predictor variable can be monitored by using a fuzzy regression model which is referred to as profile. The purpose of this paper is to develop a multivariate approach for monitoring process/product fuzzy quality profiles in phase I for applications where the quality characteristic is linguistic, imprecise, vague or deficient. The multivariate approach includes three fuzzy multivariate control charts which are developed by using fuzzy set theory to monitor fuzzy profiles in order to achieve an in-control process. The performance of developed approach is investigated on the basis of signal probability in various out-of-control scenarios through a simulation study. Compared with univariate approach, the results indicate a good performance of our multivariate approach in detecting all sized shifts in process profiles. A real case in tourism industry is utilized to show the applicability of the proposed approach.     

The Ignored Performance Measure

This paper studies a setting in which a risk-averse agent must be motivated to work on two tasks: evaluating a potential project and, if the project is adopted, implementing it. Although a performance measure that is informative of an agent's action is typically valuable because it can be used to improve the risk sharing of the contract, this is not necessarily the case in this two-task setting. I provide a sufficient condition under which a performance measure that is informative of the agent's implementation effort is worthless for contracting despite the agent being risk averse. This shows that information content is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for a performance measure to be valuable.     

Entrepreneurship and innovativeness of small and medium-sized construction enterprises

The construction industry is a key industry in any economy. Due to its specific characteristics, the industry is of substantial importance to the development of other sectors. Competition is highly intense, and the industry itself is susceptible to changes in market circumstances that force the entities operating in it to continuously take actions to enhance their competitiveness by, among other things, introducing innovative solutions. The objective of the present study is to evaluate the level of innovativeness of enterprises in the small and medium-sized (SME) sector in the Polish construction industry and to identify the factors that influence this level of innovativeness, which relates to the location of the business and managers’ awareness of the significance of innovation in shaping a firm’s competitiveness. Qualitative research was conducted on a sample of 608 companies. The obtained results demonstrate that construction companies from the SME sector in Poland are characterized by a level of innovativeness that is similar to that found in other enterprises, which is a consequence of the relatively high awareness of the significance of innovation to obtaining a competitive position among the managers of these companies. An analysis of the innovative activities of these companies by location shows, in turn, that entities operating in regions that are less economically developed and less attractive in terms of investment are more innovative.     

How much should an investor trust the startup entrepreneur? A network model

Trust is an important determinant of start-up financing. In a simple agent-based model it is determined what the best trusting strategy is for a collective of investors and whether it is rational for an individual investor to deviate from this collective optimum. Trust depends on a measure of social distance and is the precondition for investment. Trust increases and decreases based on whether an investor is satisfied with the interest payments received from an entrepreneur. If an investor is dissatisfied, he terminates the relation with the entrepreneur. For assessing the quality of their own investments, investors communicate with other investors in a network-like structure. I find that, as a collective, it is best for investors to compare their returns critically in order to identify unproductive entrepreneurs, but to be tolerant regarding existing links to entrepreneurs in order not to terminate profitable relations because of minor productivity drops. However, it is optimal for an individual investor to deviate from this strategy and to be less easily disappointed, but to decrease trust in larger steps. In a sense, an individual investor can free ride on the others’ critical assessment. If all investors behave according to this latter strategy, too many unproductive firms remain in the market and the average investor’s return is lower than in the collective optimum.