The Competitive Advantage of Collaboration – Throwing New Light on The Nordic Model

ABSTRACT

In one of the most influential contributions to modern political economy, Hall and Soskice have launched a distinction between ‘liberal’ and ‘coordinated’ market economies, placing the Nordic countries firmly in the latter category. We argue that, while the H&S distinction may serve classificatory purposes, seeing the Nordic model in terms of ‘coordinated capitalism’ blurs the distinctive features of the Nordic countries’ success as productive and fair economies. We contend that the central formula behind this success lies in what we call the Nordic model’s ambidexterity – the capacity to combine collaborative and competitive elements and skilfully navigate between them. Using an interdisciplinary perspective (inspired by organisation theory, cultural semiotics and evolutionary analysis), we provide a conceptual basis for reinterpreting the Nordic Model as an ambidextrous combination of culturally rooted, collaborative strategies that are subsequently competitively exposed. The article illustrates the workings of this ambidexterity in three societal domains: work life (including female participation), resource management – illustrated by the Norwegian petro-economy – and international business management and regulation with a focus on CSR. In each case we will show how collaboration is intertwined with pragmatic competitive exposure, yielding high productivity, high welfare, as well as fair income and wealth distribution.     

资本主义福利国家的必然性、局限性与面临的挑战——基于经济全球化视阈的历史唯物主义诠释和启示

资本主义福利国家的产生和发展是第二次世界大战后资本主义社会应对生产力发展和生产方式变化的自我调整，具有历史必然性，也具有自身局限性：形式上的“国家回归”没有改变资本主义私有制生产关系，无法消除资本主义社会的根本矛盾和经济危机；社会普遍高福利的实现（部分）依赖于凭借显著竞争优势在世界市场上获取的超额利润，福利模式具有排他性和剥削性，不能为落后国家所复制，也不能成为世界福利模式。因而，资本主义福利国家成为发达国家的特权，且当经济危机爆发或出现经济滞胀时，其会采取削减甚至拆除社会福利的措施以追求资本和财富的积累。随着经济全球化发展，资本积累与社会福利的矛盾日益凸显，资本主义福利国家模式面临实践上的可持续性和价值上的普适性双重挑战。借鉴资本主义福利国家的经验教训，后发国家应努力提升“结构的或根本性的竞争力”，寻求经济与社会的平衡发展；中国还应充分发挥国家制度和国家治理体系的显著优势，积极建设国家主导、福利要素多元、福利机制灵活的中国特色社会主义福利社会。     

Tariffs and formation of free trade agreements networks

This paper examines the formation of bilateral free trade agreements (FTAs) on the basis of country heterogeneity in the tariff level. We demonstrate that a country's unilateral incentive to form an FTA depends on the relative magnitudes of the (negative) market concession effect and the (positive) market expansion effect, both of which are determined by the tariff levels of the two FTA partner countries. Global welfare is maximised when all country pairs form FTAs. Two countries in equilibrium are more likely to form an FTA when their tariff gap is smaller or when their tariff levels are neither very high nor very low. This finding is robust to several extensions of the model. Our preliminary empirical analysis provides some evidence for the finding.     

Capital controls and the location of industry

This paper studies capital controls on the outflow of capital in a two-region new economic geography model. Capital controls are set in a non-cooperative or cooperative manner by social planners. Capital controls are relatively higher in the North in the non-cooperative equilibrium. This leads to relatively more firms located in the region where more consumers reside under the non-cooperative equilibrium. The locational bias towards the North in the non-cooperative equilibrium becomes larger as trade barriers are reduced. That is, firms locate to the North at a relatively higher rate in the non-cooperative equilibrium as trade is liberalised. Contrary to previous findings, it follows that global welfare is relatively higher in the non-cooperative equilibrium, although the social planner sets capital controls by maximising joint regional welfare in the cooperative equilibrium.     

Employment Dynamics and Linkages in the Rural Economy: Insights from Senegal

Evidence on rural wage employment is thin and lacks nuance for different employment sources, insights on dynamic effects, and an understanding of the channels of effects. We assess conceptually and empirically the direct and indirect welfare effects of entry and continuation in different types of wage employment in rural Senegal. Using panel data, fixed effects and first-difference estimation, we show substantial positive welfare and linkage effects. We find that participation in wage employment increases per capita income by 143%, and reduces poverty, poverty gap and food insecurity by, respectively, 63%, 89% and 48%. While the direct effect on income is larger for non-agricultural and contractual wage employment, the indirect income effects through self-employment are more pronounced for agricultural and casual wage employment. Our results imply that job creation is important for rural development, that wage employment in agriculture can lead to considerable growth multiplier effects, and that synergies exist between large-scale and small-scale agriculture.     

Paradigm Shifts in Social Housing after Welfare-State Transformation: Learning from the German Experience

Welfare-state transformation and entrepreneurial urban politics in Western welfare states since the late 1970s have yielded converging trends in the transformation of the dominant Fordist paradigm of social housing in terms of its societal function and institutional and spatial form. In this article I draw from a comparative case study on two cities in Germany to show that the resulting new paradigm is simultaneously shaped by the idiosyncrasies of the country's national housing regime and local housing policies. While German governments have successively limited the societal function of social housing as a legitimate instrument only for addressing exceptional housing crises, local policies on providing and organizing social housing within this framework display significant variation. However, planning and design principles dominating the spatial forms of social housing have been congruent. They may be interpreted as both an expression of the marginalization of social housing within the restructured welfare housing regime and a tool of its implementation according to the logics of entrepreneurial urban politics.     

城市居民税负感及影响因素的实证研究

根据北京市居民税负感调查所得数据,通过对居民税负感及其影响因素之间的相关性实证研究,得出结论,税负感与收入、文化程度、年龄以及对税收的了解程度等因素呈显著正相关,与是否参加社保呈显著负相关。在被调查的居民中,超过一半的居民税负感较重或很重,其中,收入越高和对税收了解的越多税负感就越重,本科学历和中年人群税负感较重,未参加社保的居民税负感较重,参加社保的居民税负感较轻。税负感研究的结论显示,居民税负感不仅与税收负担的高低密切相关,而且与国家的财政支出方向密切相关,扩大财政的民生开支是降低居民税负感的重要途径。     

Advertising effects on consumer welfare: Prices paid and liking for brands selected

The effect of advertising on consumer welfare has been the subject of dispute among economists, arising largely from disagreement among scholars regarding the persuasive versus the informative role of advertising. This paper reports two experiments that explore the welfare implications of advertising effects. Experiment 1 shows that the same advertisements can either increase or decrease prices paid for selected brands, depending on the degree to which the choice situation requires brands to be recalled in order to be considered. However, an increase in prices paid caused by advertising does not necessarily imply detrimental effects on consumer welfare. Experiment 2 shows that, even under circumstances in which differentiating advertising leads consumers to select brands with higher average prices, it can provide useful information to consumers that allows them to make purchases that are more in line with their personal tastes than are the choices of consumers not exposed to the advertisements.     

流动人口不同归属情景下中国各地区人口老龄化形势

利用国家统计局提供的2000年人口普查0.95‰抽样原始数据,分析了人口流动对于中国不同地区人口老龄化形势的影响,按照“流动人口”的不同归属对于老龄化形势的影响效果,将全国分为三类地区:包括上海、北京、广东等大城市在内的“流动人口”减轻其老龄化压力的地区;江西、安徽、四川、湖南等“流动人口”加剧老龄化压力的地区;河北、内蒙古等“流动人口”对人口老龄化形势影响不明显的地区。     

乡村居民参与旅游发展的多维价值及完善建议——以贵州安顺天龙屯堡文化村为个案研究

乡村居民作为乡村旅游资源的重要载体和乡村旅游开发的核心利益主体，其参与旅游发展的态度、参与程度不仅关系到乡村居民自身利益，对于提高旅游者体验质量，开拓乡村旅游市场，促进乡村旅游地可持续发展等都有着重要的现实意义。本文在文献研究和实地调研的基础上，从实证经济学角度出发，以贵州安顺天龙屯堡乡村旅游发展模式为个案，对乡村居民参与旅游发展的实践进行分析，进一步探索和揭示乡村社区居民参与旅游发展的意义，并对社区居民参与旅游发展中的潜在问题提出完善建议。