Modelling the choice between regulation and liability in terms of social welfare

Abstract.  Using a formal political economy model with asymmetric information, we illustrate the conditions under which an environmental protection system based on extending liability to private financiers is welfare superior, inferior, or equivalent to a system based on an incentive regulatory scheme subject to capture by the regulatees. We explicitly consider the following factors: the cost of care and its efficiency in reducing the probability of an environmental accident, the social cost of public funds, the net profitability of the risky activities, the level of damages, and the regulatory capture bias. We characterize in such a parameter space the regions where one system dominates the other. JEL classification: D82, K32     

Multi-attribute Auction and Negotiation for e-Procurement of Logistics

The paper addresses the topic of e-procurement of logistics services and examines how the system that companies adopt to support this task affects the process performance. The system is evaluated in terms of substantive outcomes (e.g., logistics providers’ profits) and other performances related to perceptions and behavioral issues. Specifically, the considered system is characterized by the exchange mechanism that rules the transaction (multi-attribute auction vs. negotiation) and the level of problem complexity. The analysis, conducted via a laboratory experiment, shows that both the exchange mechanism and the problem complexity affect performance. Practical implications, which could help companies design effective e-procurement systems, are discussed.     

Co-ordinating fiscal authorities in the euro-zone: a key role for the ECB

This paper examines the conditions for fiscal restraint to emergeas Nash equilibrium in the game between fiscal authorities ina monetary union and discusses the implications for the ECB'smonetary strategy. We show that fiscal authorities fail to internalizethe adverse area-wide effects of their policies when the ECBtargets union-wide aggregates. To address this co-ordinationfailure, we propose that the ECB reacts to fiscal restraintby implementing a monetary reward. Applying the pareto- andrisk dominance criteria to the ensuing co-ordination game, weshow that the ECB can ensure convergence upon fiscal restraintby adopting a weakly countercyclical reaction function.     

Social Movements and Public Administration: Spontaneous Citizens’ Committees in Florence

Urban protest is often carried out by citizens’ committees: that is, political groups that mobilize on issues affecting a small territorial area, use various forms of protest, and are organized in very loosely structured forms. Based on interviews with members of citizens’ committees in Florence, this article discusses their identities, strategies and organizational models, as well as their interaction with local authorities. Active mainly in issues of pollution and security, the Florentine committees frame their demands in terms of defending or improving quality of life in a defined territory. Mobilizing citizens who have often had previous experience in voluntary and/or political associations, citizens’ committees evidence a strongly participatory organizational model, with, however, notably discontinuous levels of activity. Whilst privileging moderate forms of protest, citizens’ committees also seem to have more and more channels of access to the institutions of local government, which sometimes perceive them as a source of information and aggregate consensus. The quality of the interactions between citizens’ committees and the public administration plays an important role in determining the extent to which this type of urban protest produces social capital. La contestation urbaine est souvent menée par des comités citoyens, c’est–à–dire des groupes politiques qui se mobilisent sur des problèmes affectant une zone territoriale limitée, emploient diverses formes de protestation et s’organisent selon des structures très informelles. A partir d’entretiens avec des membres de comités citoyens de Florence, cet article étudie leurs identités, stratégies et modèles d’organisation, ainsi que leur interaction avec les autorités locales. Surtout actifs sur des questions de pollution et de sécurité, les comités florentins formulent leurs revendications en termes de défense ou d’amélioration de la qualité de la vie dans un territoire donné. Mobilisant les citoyens qui, souvent, ont déjà eu une expérience dans des associations bénévoles et/ou politiques, ces comités démontrent un modèle organisationnel fortement participatif avec, toutefois, des degrés d’activité particulièrement intermittents. Bien que privilégiant des formes modérées de contestation, les comités citoyens semblent disposer de moyens toujours plus nombreux d’accéder aux institutions des gouvernements locaux, lesquelles les considèrent parfois comme une source d’informations et de consensus collectif. La qualité des interactions entre les comités citoyens et l’administration publique est importante si l’on veut déterminer dans quelle mesure ce type de contestation urbaine génère un capital social.     

Welfare-State Retrenchment: The Partisan Effect Revisited

This paper aims to shed light on the role of the ‘ideology’of political parties in shaping the evolution of the welfarestate in 18 developed democracies, by providing empirical findingson the determinants of social-programme entitlements and socialspending over the period 1981–99. The paper shows thatstructural change is a major determinant of the extent of socialprotection. Our results suggest that overall spending is drivenup by structural change. On the other hand, strong structuralchange has a negative influence on welfare entitlements measuredby the net rate of sickness insurance. Partisan influence playsan important role in the dynamics of the welfare state. Left-winggovernments strengthen the positive effect of shocks on aggregatesocial expenditure, while right-wing governments undertake evenstronger cutbacks in replacement rates as a reaction to structuralchange. Footnotes ¹ E-mail addresses: bruno.amable{at}ens.fr; donatella.gatti{at}cepremap.cnrs.fr;jan.schumacher{at}wiwi.uni-regensburg.de     

Welfare States in Hard Times

Welfare states have been subject to a host of conflicting pressuresfrom high unemployment, rising income inequality, populationaging, tax competition, rising budget deficits and debts, slowgrowth, and fears that economic dynamism was being stifled byexcessive taxes and benefit levels. Nevertheless total spendingon welfare has edged up in many countries and cuts in ratesof benefit have generally been fairly modest. The generosityof the welfare state has an enormous influence on poverty andincome inequality and still appears to be popular in most ofEurope. Suggestions that society would benefit from reducedworking time must reckon with the fact that it is paid workwhich generates the tax revenue required to fund welfare spending. Footnotes ¹ E-mail addresses: donatella.gatti{at}cepremap.cnrs.fr; andrew.glyn{at}economics.oxford.ac.uk     

Food Competition in World Markets: Some Evidence from a Panel Data Analysis of Top Exporting Countries

This paper investigates the relevance of relative prices and world income as determinants of food exports for the top trading countries in the period 1992–2012 using a panel data framework. We find that price elasticities generally take lower values for processed goods, and the opposite holds for income elasticities. Processed goods are also characterised by an inverse relationship between price elasticities and average unit values. The analysis suggests that both emerging and advanced countries can be expected to increase their export specialisation in processed goods. Furthermore, developed economies can face fierce competition from emerging countries by enhancing the quality content of their processed good exports.     

Implementing open government: a qualitative comparative analysis of digital platforms in France,Italy and United Kingdom

Open government is spreading throughout the world as a policy agenda oriented to foster transparency, participation and collaboration. Despite its increasing relevance in policy documents, there has been a scarce interest in deepening the analysis of how such agenda has been implemented in different national contexts. By adopting a multidimensional and multilevel perspective, we propose a qualitative comparative analysis of institutional digital platforms able to gather the evolution of open government in three European countries. We retrieved 979 open government platforms in France, Italy, and United Kingdom and analyzed them with an original set of indicators grouped in the three macro-areas of e-government, open data and transparency, participation and collaboration. Our study has methodological and policy implications: from the one hand, we provide the widest and deepest survey of open government platforms so far, contributing to the standardization of research methods on this field. From the other hand, we can observe that open government implementation is characterized by some typical traits, suggesting a trans-national convergence; this evidence is particularly prominent in the e-government and open data areas, whereas Participatory platforms are characterised by higher degrees of fragmentation both at the trans-national and at the intra-national levels. The analysis of open government platforms also reveals that, at the intra-national level, public administrations’ approaches to digital government are not homogeneous, although at different degrees among the three countries involved in our study, suggesting the need of a better integration and coordination by central authorities.

     

New evidence on the link between ethnic fractionalization and economic freedom

Economics of Governance - Among the determinants of economic freedom, the presence of different ethnic groups within a country has sometimes been explored by the empirical literature, without...