Intelligence‐led policing at the Amsterdam‐Amstelland Police Department: operationalized business intelligence with an enterprise ambition

This article elaborates on the setup for intelligence‐led policing in support of ensuring public safety as it presented itself in the Spring of 2007 at the Amsterdam‐Amstelland Police Department in the Netherlands. The picture that is painted is the outcome of a qualitative research effort involving semi‐structured interviews triangulated with other internal data sources. The main goal of the article is to establish how an organization can leverage its operationalized business intelligence ambition by connecting it into an ambition for better enterprise management. The case ends in showcasing two popular operational business intelligence tools instrumental to capacity management. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

European Parliament elections in times of crisis

In May 2014, EU citizens will vote in the most important European Parliament elections to date. With the new powers allocated to it by the Lisbon Treaty, the new European Parliament will shape EU policies in many important areas and will elect the President of the Commission. However, public confi dence in the EU has fallen to historically low levels — to a great extent due to the fi nancial crisis and its aftermath — and the participation rate in European Parliament elections has dropped steadily since the fi rst call for a direct vote in 1979. This raises fundamental questions about its political and democratic legitimacy. This Forum examines the economic agendas of the main political parties vying for power and the potential outcome of the May elections, including the role that radical and anti-euro parties are likely to play in the campaign and in the next Parliament.     

Is ethnic discrimination due to distaste or statistics?

Employing a vignette experiment, we test the empirical importance of key attitudes underlying the models of taste-based and statistical discrimination in explaining ethnic hiring discrimination. We find that employer concern that co-workers and customers prefer collaborating with natives drives discrimination.     

The Political Economy of Distress in East Asian Financial Institutions

The 1997–1999 East Asian crisis is an interesting case for studying the determinants of distress and closure of financial institutions. Of a sample of 283 financial institutions from Indonesia, Korea, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Thailand, 120 experienced distress, and by July 1999, 38 were closed. We find that traditional, CAMEL-type financial data for 1996 help predict distress and closure. Connections—with industrial groups or influential families—increased the likelihood of distress, however, suggesting that supervisors had granted selective prior forbearance from prudential regulations. Since closure was more, not less, likely with connections, the closure processes themselves appear transparent. We also find evidence of too big to fail policies.     

Investment Incentives: New Money, Debt Relief, and the Critical Role of Conditionality in the Debt Crisis

External debt depresses investment and lowers economic growthbelow its potential through its negative effect on liquidityand expected profitability. These effects can pull a countryinto a downward spiral in which both the debtor country andcreditors lose. This article considers the possibilities forrevising contracts between a debtor and its creditors once adebt crisis has erupted. The framework that we develop showshow various combinations of new money and cuts in debt and debtservice affect a debtor country's welfare, its debt repayments,and the earnings of its creditors. The analysis distinguishesbetween debtor countries that are willing and able to precommitcredibly to an adjustment program and those that are not. Thisdistinction provides the basis for a discussion of conditionallending by the international financial institutions to provideincentives and sanctions that make credible a debtor's promisesto invest.     

Policy Selectivity Forgone: Debt and Donor Behavior in Africa

We assess the dynamics behind the high net resource transfersby donors and creditors to Sub-Saharan African countries. Analyzingthe determinants of overall net transfers for a panel of 37recipient countries in 1978–98, we find that country policiesmattered little. Donors—especially bilateral donors—actuallymade greater transfers to countries with high debt, largelyowed to multilateral creditors, when policies were "bad." Weconclude that comprehensive debt relief has the potential, thoughnot the certainty, to restore selectivity in support of goodpolicies. That would make development assistance more effectivegoing forward—and increase public support in donor countries.     

Privatization Effects in Central and Eastern Europe

MOCT-MOST: Economic Policy in Transitional Economies -     

Historical trade integration: globalization and the distance puzzle in the long twentieth century

In times of ongoing globalization, the notion of geographic neutrality expects the impact of distance on trade to become ever more irrelevant. However, over the last three decades a wide range of studies has found an increase in the importance of distance during the second half of the twentieth century. This paper tries to reframe this discussion by characterizing the effect of distance over a broader historical point of view. To make maximal use of the available data, we use a state-space model to construct a bilateral index of historical trade integration. Our index doubles to quadruples yearly data availability before 1950, allowing us to expand the period of analysis to 1880–2011. This implies that the importance of distance as a determinant of the changing trade pattern can be analyzed for both globalization waves. In line with O’Rourke (Politics and trade: lessons from past globalisations. Technical Report, Bruegel, 2009) and Jacks et al. (J Int Econ 83(2):185–201, 2011), we find that the first wave was marked by a strong, continuing decrease in the effect of distance. Initially, the second globalization wave started out similarly, but from the 1960s onward the importance of distance starts increasing. Nevertheless, this change is dwarfed by the strong decrease preceding it.     

Managerial Objectives and the Governance of Public and Non-Profit Organizations

By investigating managerial objectives, we test the simultaneous need for both control (agency theory) and collaboration (stewardship theory) in public and non-profit governance. We construct a discrete choice experiment to elicit preferences of managers in Belgian public and non-profit nursing homes. The results confirm that boards of nursing homes may experience pressure to simultaneously control and collaborate with their managers, thereby suggesting that agency and stewardship theory can be combined into a more general internal governance framework. We conclude by providing some policy implications to improve public and non-profit governance.     

Financial Development, Property Rights, and Growth

In countries with more secure property rights, firms might allocate resources better and consequentially grow faster as the returns on different types of assets are more protected against competitors' actions. Using data on sectoral value added for a large number of countries, we find evidence consistent with better property rights leading to higher growth through improved asset allocation. Quantitatively, the growth effect is as large as that of improved access to financing due to greater financial development. Our results are robust using various samples and specifications, including controlling for growth opportunities.