DISASTROUS ANTI‐ECONOMICS AND THE ECONOMICS OF DISASTERS

This article surveys and synthesises some of the research on the political economy of natural disasters. While people tend to support government intervention to reduce prices or otherwise aid disaster recovery, research shows that government organisations are often corrupt and ineffective. Further, since people tend to mis‐identify the causes of (for example) gasoline price increases after natural disasters, government intervention after a disaster is likely to do more harm than good.     

Why Taxpayer Support for R&D?

Taxpayers of OECD countries are made to support research and development by government and industry. Is R&D a public good that justifies taxpayer support because of its external benefits to society as a whole? Professor Palda of Canada contests yet another argument for state intervention io subsidise high technology.     

台湾地区风险投资运作的经验借鉴及其启示

我国台湾地区风险投资业虽起步较晚,但由于政府大力扶植和组织管理模式创新等,已发展成为继美国之后的风险投资发展最好的地区。然而,国内学者一提到风险投资经验借鉴,首先就会想到美国。但事实上,美国现在风险投资业所处的金融环境、风险投资运作模式、科技经济水平、相关的法律、乃至于创业投资本身存在的目的和意义都与我国有很大的区别。相比之下台湾地区和大陆的风险投资业在起步之初,都是政府主导型的,而且起步期也大致相近,所以,台湾地区风险投资业的发展应对我们更有借鉴意义。本文通过从政府扶植组织管理模式等方面具体分析,总结和借鉴台湾地区风险投资发展的经验,对我国大陆风险投资发展的启示。     

Human resource management practices to improve quality: A case example of human resource management intervention in government

This article describes the quality approach to management in government and contrasts it with the classic, often more bureaucratic, approach. It places particular focus on Project Pacer Share, a government total quality management effort underway at McClellan Air Force Base where, using quality tools and techniques, major reforms in the United States Civil Service System and human resource management are being tested. Specific human resource management initiatives that need to be undertaken to support organizationwide quality performance are presented.     

住房政策的局限性:政策的初衷与实施效果的背离

在房价上涨过快的背景下,基于舆论的压力,政府常常会出台一些旨在稳定房价、解决住房短缺问题的政策,然而有些政策的实施效果却常常背离政策的初衷.回顾了美国40年代实施的房租管制,并分析了中国正在实施的提高税收和经济适用房政策,发现这些政策的实施效果大都适得其反,不仅没有达到预期的目标,反而使得住房问题恶化.     

Modelling NPO–Government Relations: Australian case studies

Abstract

Non-profit organizations (NPOs) are major providers of services in many fields of endeavour, and often receive financial support from government. This article investigates different forms of government/non-profit funding relationships, with the viewpoint being mainly, though not exclusively, from the perspective of the non-profit agencies. While there are a number of existing typologies of government/NPO relations, these are dated and in need of further empirical analysis and testing. The article advances an empirically derived extension to current models of government/NPO relations. A future research agenda is outlined based on the constructs that underpin typologies, rather than discrete categorization of relationships.     

城中村改造中的"市场失灵"和"政府失灵"及防止途径

城中村是中国快速城市化进程中出现的特有现象。城中村改造问题的本质是利益问题,实质上是与城中村改造相关的利益各方利益调整的过程。由于市场失灵的存在,城中村改造基本都在政府主导下进行,但由于政府的失灵,往往也会产生很多弊端。但大多数学者仍认为政府应该在改造的过程中发挥主导作用,问题是政府应该在城中村改造中发挥怎样的作用,或者说市场的边界又在哪里。本文初步明确了城中村改造中政府干预的重点和市场的边界,阐明了城中村改造的总体思路,最后提出了防止城中村改造失败的对策。     

Complexity in local government change

Abstract

This article discusses empirical research findings indicating that complexity is a dominant characteristic in local government change and addresses that the current complexity sets limits to rational reform processes and gives way to political leadership.

During the recent decade, intermunicipal co-operation has emerged as a major issue in local governance in Finland. Despite the fact that the need for intense co-operation is acknowledged in most surveys, practical steps are often difficult to take due to complexity of the interorganizational action. Actors come upon complex situations involving many issues; situations where the issues are continuously changing and complicatedly interdependent. Circumstances are further blurred by the fact that actors often hide their preferences.

In the changing local governance, complexity, paradoxes and uncertainty decrease the prospective of managerial and expert knowledge, because rational calculations do not give definitive support for decision making. From this perspective, we have reached the limits of rational, clear-cut reforming. More than before, the implementation of change depends on the emergence of political leaders willing and able to take responsibility for reforms.     

THE USE AND ABUSE OF MARKETS IN HOUSING POLICY

This paper argues that, despite its rhetoric in support of markets, government does not understand how markets work, but is rather trying to use certain aspects of markets to control social housing. The paper looks at three areas: first, the idea of private finance and how this is used by government as a form of public policy; second, the notion of risk and whether it actually occurs in social housing; and third, the contention that government is incapable of appreciating the manner in which markets operate because it only wishes to provide safe options and so cannot countenance real choice and competition.     

Time horizons matter: the hazard rate of coalition governments and the size of government

This study examines how coalition governments affect the size of government, measured by total central government expenditure as a share of GDP. Existing studies suggest that the presence of multiple political parties within ruling coalitions generate common pool resource problems or bargaining inefficiencies which, in turn, leads to more government spending when coalition governments are in office. We demonstrate that coalition governments have shorter time horizons than single party governments and use that finding to motivate a simple formal model. The model shows that coalition governments have greater incentives to increase government spending because of a lower discount factor in office. Results from empirical models estimated on a global sample of 111 democracies between 1975 and 2007 provide strong statistical support for the aforementioned theoretical prediction. The empirical results remain robust when we control for alternative explanations, employ different estimation techniques, and use different measures of government spending.     

Pursuing sustainable development through green entrepreneurship: An institutional perspective

Pursuing sustainable development through green entrepreneurship has been advocated, conceptualized, and empirically examined in the recent environmental management and entrepreneurship literature. However, green entrepreneurs are embedded in institutional environments that may discourage them from embracing sustainable development because of the “paradox of embedded agency.” How can a firm overcome the liability of such an agency issue and escape what has become known as a “green prison”? This study proposes that, because international venturing exposes firms to foreign institutions, it provides them with opportunities for institutional learning. Thus, we examine how international venturing influences green entrepreneurship which, in turn, impacts firm performance. Specifically, based on institutional theory, this study develops a firm-level green entrepreneurship framework with three dimensions: green initiatives (a firm's active adoption of green practices), received government green support (benefits that a firm gains from the government by adapting to governmental incentives, programs, and policies related to green practices), and green political influence (a firm's attempts to influence legislation that enacts laws, rules, and regulations related to green practices). The results obtained by analyzing 152 firms that engage in international venturing activities and 151 firms that do not show that international venturing is positively associated with green initiatives and government green support while these two factors further directly enhance firm performance and mediate the effects of international venturing on performance.     

湛江港建设特种船集散及后勤保障基地的策略研究

我国大力发展海洋经济、以及中国东盟自贸区的繁荣成长，造就了南海和北部湾海域特种船物流市场的兴旺局面。湛江港应找准服务对象、通过完善配套设施建设，与相关单位合作提供货物信息与技术支持，为众多的特种船舶提供一个稳定、安全和专业的集散及后勤保障基地，以避免与周边港口的同质化恶性竞争，实现自身的错位发展、多元化经营和提高资本收益目标。     

U.S. Strategic Trade Policy and the Competitiveness of the U.S. Construction Industry in Developing Country Markets

SUMMARY

U.S. government trade policy increasingly reflects “strategic trade” beliefs that, because competition in markets is imperfect, governments can act strategically to affect trade flows and enhance national welfare. The U.S. National Export Strategy targets the infrastructure sector in twelve developing countries as a strategic opportunity for U.S. construction firms. This paper examines whether U.S. government export promotion initiatives effectively implement strategic trade policy by providing appropriate support to these firms in that target market. It concludes that, within limits, they do.     

略论规制框架下的劳动关系博弈

劳资关系是劳动力市场上一对主要关系,双方不断从自身利益出发进行着博弈。然而由于劳动者的弱势地位,在这种关系中处于不利地位,其自身权益经常受到侵害。主要以劳动关系为研究对象,在规制理论框架下对其进行了分析,并探析政府规制在劳动关系中的作用和存在的问题,并提出了若干政策建议。     

建立应急防控物资供应链模式设想

伴随紧急事件发生常会出现物资短缺、供应渠道不畅等问题,尤其对于一些像医疗用品等特殊物资的供给,因其规格标准具有严格要求,加之生产企业和供应商数量有限,短时间获得大量供应尤其存在困难。文章运用供应链管理模式结合医用物资的生产供应特点,提出了由政府层面组建应急防控物资供应链并发挥指挥协调作用的设想,通过集中整合政府各职能部门和社会分散资源,保障各类应急防控物资顺利获得并及时发送到位。     

On the optimal design of disaster insurance in a federation

Recent experience with disasters and terrorist attacks in the US indicates that state and local governments rely on the federal sector for support after disasters occur. But these same governments invest in infrastructure designed to reduce vulnerability to natural and man-made hazards. We show that when the federal government is committed to full insurance against disasters, regions will have incentives to under-invest in ex-ante protective measures. We derive the structure of the optimal second-best insurance system when regional governments choose investment levels non-cooperatively and the central government cannot verify regional investment choices. For low probability disasters this will result in lower ex-post intergovernmental transfers (and hence less ex-post redistribution) and greater ex-ante investment. However, the second-best transfer scheme suffers from a time-inconsistency problem. Ex-post, the central government will be driven towards full insurance rather than the second-best grants, which results in a type of soft budget constraint problem. Sub-national governments will anticipate this and reduce their investment in protective infrastructure even further. The result is that the central government may be better off suffering the underinvestment that results with first-best transfers because investment is even lower under second-best transfers when the central government is unable to commit.     

Supporting high-tech start-ups: Lessons from Italian technology policy

Public intervention is often advocated in high-tech sectors in order to solve market imperfections that limit the activity of new technology-based firms (NTBFs). Whilst some European countries have adopted national government support policies which explicitly target this type of firm; in Italy, as in other EU countries, there are no public support measures specifically designed for NTBFs. So, a question arises: to what extent are the NTBFs of these countries able to get funds from public administration? The paper focuses on the Italian case, and after a review of the available national public subsidies, through empirical and econometric analyses, it investigates whether horizontal general-purpose direct support mechanisms at national level permit an efficient allocation of public funds. The results highlight the need for more specific and customised policy measures towards NTBFs.     

Interaction effects in cross-national studies

One may analyse interaction effects either by adding a multiplicative term to an ordinary regression equation or by group comparisons. The effects of human capital formation and government revenues on economic growth in LDCs serve as an example. The proposition under discussion claims that high government revenues (as a share of GDP) cancel the otherwise positive effects of human capital formation on economic growth. This proposition cannot be supported in regression analyses with an interaction term, although it receives rather strong support from comparisons of linear-additive regressions of growth of rates on human capital formation separately done for high and low revenue countries. This result leads to the question which technique and thereby which finding should be adopted. Since regression analyses with interaction terms investigate, whether an interaction of a restricted, symmetrical type applies, group comparisons should often be preferred.     

An economic offer they cannot refuse! Economic expectations on incumbent government support in Core and periphery European countries

The importance of economic conditions on election outcomes is well established. This paper supplements the standard approach to economic voting by assessing government support from a highly debated perspective of European spaces: Core countries and Periphery countries (Central Eastern European and Southern countries). The paper reveals that the economic conditions perceived by voters in the future are expected to differently affect incumbent government support depending on the macroeconomic position of the country. This paper finds that, contrary to Core countries' electors, voters in periphery countries are keener to support the incumbent governments if the economic outputs are positive. It concludes that positive economic expectations are strongly and positively associated with incumbent government support, regardless of previous vote choice, while negative economic expectations are strongly and negatively associated with government support.     

Should the government directly intervene in stock market during a crisis?

Unlike foreign exchange markets where central banks frequently intervene, the governments strive not to intervene in the stock markets since intervention transmit negative signals and carry market-related side effects. The main reasons often cited in support of intervention are to bring price stability and to restore investors’ confidence. During the recent economic turmoil, opportunities for the governments to intervene in the stock markets were mainly exploited in emerging and developing countries. We study the outcome of the Russian government's intervention in its major stock market between September and October 2008. This intervention was intended to reverse the sudden and swift declining trend in traded security prices by altering the market's expectations. By using a combination of event study and a multivariate GARCH model, our findings does not support direct government intervention in the stock market during a crisis.