Negative effects of competition in a medical-service market

A market for medical care is characterized by uncertain, but inelastic demand and a ‘soft budget constraint’. We assume that in such a market, government decides on giving licenses to different private institutions to provide medical service. In this paper we present an argument as to why competition has a negative effect on social welfare and therefore government should only provide one license. We also explain why in such a market the profit-maximizing institutions install too high a capacity in comparison to a social optimum.     

Federalism and decentralization—a critical survey of frequently used indicators

The economic effects of federalism are unclear: some papers find that federalism has strong positive effects on a number of economically relevant variables, others find negative effects. The results often crucially hinge on the proxies for federalism used. In this paper, we critically survey the existing indicators for both federalism and fiscal decentralization. We argue that federalism is a constitutional institution, whereas decentralization is the outcome of a policy choice, and that the two ought to be systematically distinguished because decentralization can also occur in nonfederally structured states. We further argue that institutional details are very important with regard to federalism and that dummy variables usually capture only very specific aspects of these institutional details. We use factor analysis to test whether the latent variables behind the observed indicators support these assumptions. More than two important factors are derived, implying that a more fine-grained differentiation beyond simply “‘federalism” and “decentralization” might be in order. The correlations of the most important proxies for various aspects of federalism and decentralization with a number of quasi-exogenous variables, as well as with institutional variables, are usually rather modest.     

携手应对社会保障和审核可靠性的挑战

第四届中欧企业社会责任圆桌会议提供了一个很好的机会,让大家可以讨论中国企业社会责任方面的重要议题。除了我们在这次会议讨论的主题,我想要强调,这个会议本身就是讨论中国快速发展的企业社会责任历程中重要的组成部分。这个以企业社会责任为主题的圆桌会议早于2007年之前已经开始召开了,在过去几年中相继举办。     

Author Index Volume 24 2003

Authors Index

Author Index Volume 24 2003     

Deficiencies of orthodox foreign trade theory with regard to employment

The orthodox theory of foreign trade, which is simply a theory of re-allocation, can scarcely do justice to the issues that arise in the context of North-South relations. Its isolation from the problems of world and regional economic development, different trade flows and the transfer of production factors reduces its relevance to employment.