WICKEDNESS IN SOCIAL CHOICE

In an article from 1973, Rittel and Webber distinguished between ‘tame’ or ‘benign’ problems on the one hand and ‘wicked’ problems on the other. The authors argued that wicked problems occur in nearly all public policy issues. Since different groups adhere to different value-sets, solutions can only be expressed as better or worse. By no means can they be viewed as definitive or objective. In this paper we consider, from this very angle, the theory of social choice which is about the aggregation of individual preferences with the aim to derive a consistent social preference. We show that collective choice offers wicked problems of various types which differ in their degree of severity. We hereby concentrate on welfare functions and voting schemes of different kinds and discuss these in the light of various criteria such as Arrow's independence condition, Condorcet consistency, monotonicity, manipulability, and other properties.     

Supply Disruptions and Regional Price Effects in a Spatial Oligopoly—An Application to the Global Gas Market

Supply shocks in the global gas market may affect countries differently, as the market is regionally interlinked but not perfectly integrated. Additionally, high supply‐side concentration may expose countries to market power in different ways. To evaluate the strategic position of importing countries with regard to gas supplies, we disentangle the import price into different components and characterize each component as price increasing or price decreasing. Because of the complexity of the interrelations in the global gas market, we use an equilibrium model programmed as a mixed complementarity problem (MCP) and simulate the blockage of liquefied natural gas (LNG) flows through the Strait of Hormuz. This enables us to account for the oligopolistic nature and the asymmetry of the gas supply. We find that Japan faces the most severe price increases, as the Japanese gas demand completely relies on LNG supply. In contrast, European countries such as the UK benefit from good interconnection to the continental pipeline system and domestic price taking production, both of which help to mitigate an increase in physical costs of supply as well as in the exercise of market power.     

NOUVEL ESSOR DES FONDATIONS AU QUÉBEC ET AU CANADA: POUR UNE ANALYSE SOCIOPOLITIQUE FONDÉE SUR LE CONCEPT D'ÉCONOMIE PLURIELLE

Philanthropic foundations are the object of little research in Canada and Quebec. Our article recognizes the role of these organizations, as well as the presence of powerful new foundations, rich in assets and donations. This article consists of three parts. The first part presents a theoretical review of the American literature published from 2000 on. The second part examines data that we extracted from three main repertoires. Though informative, these repertoires tend to classify Canadian and Quebec foundations in categories that are mostly fiscal and legal and tend to break them down as public or private foundations. We therefore question the limits of studies based on such categories. In the third part of the article we propose a theoretical framework based on a sociopolitical point of view in an attempt to transcend the binary approach. Our approach borrows from the concepts of social and solidarity economy (SSE) and plural economy in order to better understand the new institutional arrangements in which foundations operate. This theoretical framework allows us to analyse foundations as actors of the SSE even though they might not reproduce automatically the principles and the values of the SSE in their behaviours. On the contrary, from the standpoint of a plural economy we may be in a better position to develop a sound sociopolitical analysis of diverse configurations and hybrid forms resulting from emulations or transactions between the principles of the social and solidarity economy (reciprocity), the private economy (competition) and the public economy (redistribution).     

‘HAVE YOU FELT ANGRY LATELY?’: A NOTE ON UNFAIR WAGE PERCEPTIONS AND THE NEGATIVE EMOTION OF ANGER

The author analyses the nexus between unfair wage perceptions of workers and the frequency of the negative emotion of anger. For this purpose, German household panel data for the years 2007, 2009, 2011 and 2013 are used. Angry feelings in the last four weeks have occurred significantly more frequently for workers who perceive their wage as unfair, whereas the own absolute hourly wage is not significantly correlated with the frequency of having felt angry. The results further indicate that workers have felt more often angry if working hours are larger; but the economic significance seems rather small compared to unfair wage perceptions.     

Discrete time Wishart term structure models

This paper reveals that the class of Affine Term Structure Models (ATSMs) introduced by Duffie and Kan (1996) is larger than previously considered in the literature. In the framework of risk factors following a Wishart autoregressive process, we define the Wishart Term Structure Model (WTSM) as an extension of a subclass of Quadratic Term Structure Models (QTSMs), derive simple parameter restrictions that ensure positive bond yields at all maturities, and observe that the usual constraint on affine processes requiring that the volatility matrix be diagonal up to a path independent linear invertible transformation can be considerably relaxed.     

Chamberlin Meets Ciriacy‐Wantrup: Using Insights from Experimental Economics to Inform Stated Preference Research

Many studies that use stated preference (SP) surveys to estimate the demand for private or public goods can be characterized as experiments, although they are not routinely labeled as such. This paper draws from the broader experimental economics literature to provide insights for SP practitioners and researchers, particularly as it pertains to survey development, mechanism design, external validity, data analysis, and the dissemination of findings.     

Beyond the Urban–Suburban Divide: Urbanization and the Production of the Urban in Zurich North

Starting from current debates on ‘global suburbanism' and ‘postsuburbia', this article explores the changes that the former ‘urban periphery' of Zurich North has experienced in the last three decades. It mobilizes Henri Lefebvre's triadic concept of conceived, perceived and lived space in aid of an analysis of the profound urban transformations that can be observed. The construction of a new tramline serves as a guideline for an analysis of the implementation of new governance arrangements strengthening cross‐border cooperation between individual municipalities and new strategies of cooptation and expertise. This resulted in the production of new urban structures which led to a more densely woven and connected urban fabric primarily providing spaces for the headquarter economy and middle‐class housing. Concomitantly, great efforts have been made to create new public spaces, an urban image and even an urban atmosphere. These have proved at least partially successful, thus promoting a symbolic redefinition of the former urban periphery as a distinctively ‘urban' space. Conventional definitions and concepts no longer suffice to adequately understand such novel urban forms, leading to the conclusion that division into an ‘urban' and a ‘suburban' world is no longer a useful tool for urban analysis.     

Remittances and Financial Access: Is There Really a Link and for Whom? Evidence from Mexican Household Data

In policy discussions, it has frequently been claimed that migrants' remittances could function as a ‘catalyst’ for financial access among receiving households. This paper provides empirical evidence on this hypothesis from Mexico, a major receiver of remittances worldwide. Using the Mexican Family Life Survey panel (MxFLS) for 2002 and 2005, the results from the fixed effects logit model show that receiving remittances is strongly correlated with the ownership of savings accounts and to a limited degree with the availability of borrowing options. Effects are particularly important for microfinance institutions, and more important for rural households compared to urban households.