LEADERSHIP IN CLIMATE CHANGE MITIGATION: CONSEQUENCES AND INCENTIVES

Initiatives in favor of unilateral action on climate change are frequently challenged by concerns over free riding. Nevertheless, we observe an increasing number of unilateral efforts at different administrative levels and in different parts of the world. Previous academic literature described various individual mechanisms where emissions abroad may increase or decrease as a reaction to unilateral emission reductions. In this paper, we collect a comprehensive set of both positive and negative reactions and analyze them in stylized models. This allows us to identify the most important characteristics that determine the potential of a leader to boost mitigation efforts abroad. We find that this potential depends on (i) a strong ability to generate knowledge through leadership, (ii) a high degree of credibility in the international community, and (iii) a similar economic structure to the most important emitters. While most effects are difficult to quantify, this comprehensive assessment suggests that leakage effects resulting from unilateral mitigation may well be outweighed by positive reactions.     

The Organization of Organized Discontent: The Case of the Postal Workers in Britain

The case of the postal workers in Britain is examined in order to develop our knowledge of intra‐union oppositional groupings. Such groupings within the postal workers are shown to have influence as the result of the 'strategy' of a small number of activists within largely conducive circumstances of internal strife and worker combativity. However, they do not accord to our normal understanding of factions, being better characterized as shifting and temporary networks and alliances.     

A note on “Bed allocation techniques based on census data”

Capacity planning and resource allocation are crucial to the cost-effective delivery of health care services. In this paper, we present an analytic approach based on a modified version of the Holt-Winters multiplicative seasonality forecasting model to determine the frequency distribution associated with a hospital care unit's census. This paper is a follow-up to the census frequency distribution simulation model described in Lapierre et al. (Socio Econ. Plan. Sci. 33 (1999) 25). We demonstrate that our model can provide census frequency distributions equivalent to the simulation model of Lapierre et al. [1], but without the computational effort common to simulation models.     

Principles for a European Union''s Public Debt

The EU has neither the power to tax nor the right to run a public debt. We analyze if the EU should receive the right for public indebtedness. We make use of the normative theory of public indebtedness and of positive political economy analysis. Our normative analysis identified specific cases for an appropriate use of public indebtedness. According to the political economy analysis, a misuse of public debt may be possible. As the implementation of strict constitutional constraints can limit this misuse, we propose the assignment of a right to public borrowing to the EU within tight constitutional restrictions.     

Trade Union Derecognition in Britain, 1988–1994

Since the initial studies of derecognition, many articles have focused on the issue, by and large pointing to a slow increase in derecognition. However, a small number have indicated it is actually much larger. This paper shows that derecognition is even greater than these suggest and that its nature has changed. The paper looks at the contexts of this rise but argues that derecognition should not yet be seen as a major problem facing the unions.     

The dynamics of some duopoly games involving the Market Share and Nichol strategies

The paper analyses the dynamics of some duopoly output games involving the Cournot, Market-Share and Nichol strategies. The model assumes linear price and cost functions and supposes that outputs are adjusted instantaneously at discrete time intervals. For all games considered, equilibrium is either reached after a finite number of moves or a stable approach to equilibrium occurs as t → ∞. In fact, apart from a few uninteresting cases, arising from the oversimplified form of the Market-Share strategy, all equilibrium points lie on specified parts of the firms' Cournot loci.     

International Trade Without Autarkic Equilibria

It is possible that wealthy trading countries nevertheless have no autarkic equilibria. However, if a country has no autarkic equilibrium, the offer curve of that country may consist of disjoint segments, which implies that a worldwide trading equilibrium does not always exist, that international exchanges do not always take place in equilibrium, and therefore that econometric estimates of the structure of open economies must be viewed with scepticism. In the present paper, I provide conditions that are necessary and sufficient for the existence of a worldwide free-trade equilibrium and for the existence of gains from free trade for individual countries.