The Flemish customer contact centre for public information from a marketing and management perspective

This paper describes the Flemish customer contact centre for government information (‘the Flemish Infoline’) as an example of marketing in the public sector. First it defines the term ‘customer contact centre’ and describes the objectives and main characteristics of the Flemish Infoline. It then identifies the three reasons for setting up the Flemish Infoline in 1999: the complicated Belgian institutional landscape; the unprofessional telephone traffic handling and service; and the lack of knowledge about citizens' information needs. Finally, the paper applies Kotler's 4 Ps concept to the case, and puts the relevant stages from Lees‐Marsh‐ment's political marketing orientations into one integrated scheme in order to understand the functioning of the Flemish Infoline. Based on the literature and on an in‐depth interview with the project head of the Flemish Infoline, the authors demonstrate that marketing techniques can be used in contact centres for public information, but they also illustrate some important differences from those in the forprofit sector, such as the available amount of customers' personal data, the level of call operators' skills and the degree of heterogeneity of the questions. Further research on information needs and contact centres, and providing one ‘umbrella’ contact centre for government information in Belgium are recommended. Copyright © 2003 Henry Stewart Publications     

Unemployment insurance: Risk sharing versus efficiency

Two models of spot labor markets are presented in which labor suppliers have heterogeneous attitudes towards effort and in which uncertainty prevails on labor productivity and growth. The problem of selecting efficient rules to manage unemployment insurance (UI) systems is considered. We show that there does not exist any system which combines an efficient allocation of labor with an efficient allocation of risks among employees, unemployed workers and capital-owners. Pareto-efficient policy rules are a best compromise between these two conflicting objectives. It implies that productive efficiency could be improved in periods of mass unemployment by reducing UI benefits. That would be at the expense of more inefficiencies in the sharing of macroeconomic risks. At the optimum, the UI benefit is positively correlated to growth and it is negatively correlated to labor productivity.     

Daylight saving effect

Kamstra et al. [Kamstra, M.J., Kramer, L.A., Levi, M.D., 2000. Losing sleep at the market: the daylight saving anomaly. The American Economic Review 90, 1005–1011] argue that the mean weekend return following the changes in daylight saving time is less than the mean weekend return throughout the rest of the year. Opposing studies, such as Pinegar [Pinegar, J.M., 2002. Losing sleep at the market: comment. The American Economic Review 92, 1251–1256), reason that the observed results depend upon methodology. We extend the ongoing discussions by providing further evidence for equity markets and bond markets in Germany and across Europe. We further demonstrate that the daylight saving effect does not serve as a potential rationale for the weekend effect.     

International health law and consumer autonomy

Today, international health law and international consumer law are developing in the same direction and with much interaction. But the developments are not uniform. As international health law takes consumer protection into account, it tends to increase the gap between a Western international law and a Third World international law, and to emphasize the negative harmonization approach towards international health protection.Another problem concerns the unification of the rules of international health law and those of international consumer law. This problem is particularly difficult to solve, as the rules of international consumer law themselves are still far from being unified.

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Internationales Gesundheitsrecht und Verbraucherautonomie

Zusammenfassung Internationales Gesundheitsrecht und internationales Verbraucherrecht entwickeln sich heute in gleicher Richtung, obwohl sie anderen Quellen entspringen. Die wechselseitige Durchdringung nimmt zu, auch wenn die Enwicklung nicht einheitlich vor sich geht. Je mehr das internationale Gesundheitsrecht den Verbraucherschutz in sich aufnimmt, destomehr trennt es sich in ein Recht für entwickelte Staaten und ein solches für Dritte Welt-Länder. Ein vorwiegend negativ-abwehrender Zugang herrscht vor.Ein anderes Problem beinhaltet die Harmonisierung der Regeln des internationalen Gesundheits- und des internationalen Verbraucherrechts. Dies ist schon deshalb schwer erreichbar, weil das Verbraucherrecht selbst nicht einheitlich vorgeht. Die Probleme verschärfen sich, wenn man — ohne eine internationale Verbraucherinstitution wie die WHO — eine gemeinsame positive Gesundheitspolitik für Verbraucher erreichen will.

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Michel Bélanger teaches health law at the U.F.R. de Droit Public et Science Politique, Université de Bordeaux I, Avenue Léon Duguit, F 33604 Pessac, France.     

The topography of metropolitan employment: Identifying centers of employment in a polycentric urban area

While it is well recognized that US metropolitan areas are polycentric, there is little consensus as to the appropriate method for identifying concentrations of employment within them. Existing methods suffer from strong assumptions about parametric form, misspecification, or reliance on local knowledge to calibrate model parameters. This paper introduces a new nonparametric method for identifying subcenters. Results indicate that this, more flexible, nonparametric approach yields greater accuracy with regard to both urban and suburban centers compared with other approaches. This approach should provide better data for the numerous topics that depend on the spatial accounting of employment within metropolitan areas.