Preferences,choices, tournaments: Alternative foundations for the evaluation of voting schemes

The standard assumption underlying most of the negative results of the social choice theory is that the individuals have complete and transitive preference relations over the candidates. As an alternative to this assumption we consider the possibility that individuals can be characterized as possessing preference tournaments (i.e. asymmetric and complete relations) over the candidate set. We discuss the implications of the latter assumption to the negative results of social choice theory. Finally some solution concepts applicable in the individual preference tournament framework are outlined.     

Cryptographic protocols for Vickrey auctions

Although the sealed second-price or Vickrey auctions have some nice theoretical properties, they are fairly seldom utilized in practice. It has been suggested that they are vulnerable to bid-taker cheating and that the revelation of bids after the bidding makes the bidders reluctant to reveal their true valuations. We outline procedures based on modern mathematical cryptography that are instrumental in avoiding some of these difficulties and thereby will improve the properties of the Vickrey auctions.     

The interface of the energy and forest sectors—Potential players in the bioenergy business

The upcoming bioenergy business area opens up promising opportunities for the traditional energy and forest sectors. This has motivated us to study existing and potential bioenergy actors that could take up this unique opportunity and develop new business around the “green gold” of the forest. Light is shed on the interface between the energy and forest sectors through a comparison of the most focal bioenergy actors with traditional forest and energy companies. The analytical methods used include both parametric and nonparametric analysis of variance, and cluster analysis. The result is a better understanding of the players that have the potential to capitalize on the emerging business.     

Sectoral Differences in Plant Start-up Size in the Finnish Economy

New knowledge on the factors behind the choice of plant entry scale is important for understanding the entry process and the recruitment decisions of new plants in different sectors of the economy. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the effect of various industry attributes on plant start-up size, measured with employment, using data on the entire Finnish business sector. The paper extends previous research by examining the differences between manufacturing and services and by using a richer set of explanatory variables. The relative importance of the covariates for different-sized entrants is taken into account by using a quantile regression approach. The results for manufacturing and services are remarkably similar. However, the findings imply that in the future analysis it is also important to consider the effect of the regional availability of educated and experienced work force on plant start-up size in these two sectors. The findings on the importance of scale economies and industry turbulence in determining start-up size correspond to the earlier studies. The results also show that single plant and multiplant entrants face a rather different entry environment. In addition, the employment share of foreign-owned entrants in the industry has to be taken into account.     

Chris Willett (Ed.): Public Sector Reform and the Citizen's Charter. London: Blackstone Press, 1996.

Journal of Consumer Policy -     

Voting Paradoxes and MCDM

Many, if not most, problems in group decision making can be translated into MCDM problems by substituting criteria for voters. Yet, there has been very little discussion about the implications of various types of voting paradoxes to MCDM. The classic voting paradoxes, viz. Borda's and Condorcet's, have obvious implications for certain MCDM situations. The latter implies that the notion of the best alternative, given a set of criteria and information about the ordinal ranking of the alternatives on those criteria, can be essentially arbitrary. The former, in turn, demonstrates a particularly clear case of conflict between reasonable intuitions. Completely unexplored are implications of compound majority paradoxes to MCDM. The paper deals with Ostrogorski's and Anscombe's paradoxes which result from non-bisymmetry and non-associativity of the majority relation. Moreover, we shall discuss the implications of paradox of multiple elections which is a situation where the result of multiple-item election may be a policy alternative that nobody voted for.     

Environmentally friendly consumer: from determinism to emergence

Several attempts have been made by academics in the past to explain the so‐called ‘environmentally conscious’ consumer. These explanations share an important feature, namely determinism. This paper identifies three different sources of determinism that are distinguished in recent literature on the green consumer: cultural determinism, psycho‐socio‐demographic determinism and calculative determinism. An explanation of the green consumer in these terms, however, loses sight of the emergence and processuality of consumer behaviour. Process oriented constructionism, by contrast, is useful to recover these important aspects. This paper suggests a research agenda focused on socio‐material processes and situated actions that lead to the emergence and stabilization of a particular type of consumer behaviour.