Tariff Uniformity and Growth

Theoretical ambiguity exists regarding the potential benefits of adopting a uniform tariff schedule. In this paper, we investigate the empirical evidence on this question. From cross-country growth regressions over the period 1988-97 we find a nonlinear relationship between a country's standard deviation of tariffs and its growth rate. Specifically, we find that countries with either a large degree of tariff uniformity or very little tariff uniformity tended to grow faster over this time period, controlling for other factors.     

参与惯性和投资选择

参与惯性是否影响了个体的投资选择?参与惯性是如何产生的?采用2006年中国9城市投资者调查数据,本文发现:在银行存款、外汇、股票、债券、期货、基金、借出、做生意、保险金、收藏品、房地产、理财产品、彩票等广义投资项目中,个体当前和未来期望的选择都表现出了参与惯性,即倾向于维持他们过去的选择;这种参与惯性是其禀赋效应或延迟决策等行为偏见的结果,而不是理性选择所致。本文的政策涵义在于:加强投资者教育,使其意识到并主动克服投资决策中的参与惯性,这是有效增进投资者福利的政府政策所需要考虑的。     

Authority and Communication in Organizations

This paper studies delegation as an alternative to communication. We show that a principal prefers to delegate control to a better informed agent rather than to communicate with this agent as long as the incentive conflict is not too large relative to the principal's uncertainty about the environment. We further identify cases in which the principal optimally delegates control to an "intermediary", and show that keeping a veto–right typically reduces the expected utility of the principal unless the incentive conflict is extreme.     

Cooperation and Status in Organizations

We report the results of experiments designed to test the effect of social status on contributions to a public good, with and without punishment. The experiments are conducted in four‐person groups in a “star” network, where one central player observes and is observed by the others. This imposes a social structure on the game, and gives the central player a leadership role in the group, simply by virtue of being commonly observed. We further manipulate status by allocating the central position to the person who earns the highest, or the lowest, score on a trivia quiz. These high‐status and low‐status treatments are compared, and we find that the effect of organizational structure—the existence of a central position—depends on the status of the central player. Higher status players are attended to and mimicked more systematically. Punishment has differential effects in the two treatments, and is least effective in the high‐status case.     

Two Crises: Inflationary Inertia and Credibility

This paper provides a comparative analysis of the Mexican currency crisis of 1994 and the Chilean crisis of 1982 to assess to what extent exchange-rate-based stabilisation programmes are successful in reducing – or even eliminating – inflationary inertia. The paper provides a brief overview of the Chilean and Mexican reform and stabilisation programmes. A theoretical model that emphasises the role of credibility is developed to analyse the effects of exchange-rate based stabilisation programmes on inflationary inertia. According to the model, less than credible stabilisations will not eliminate inertia and will generate major real exchange rate overvaluation. Detailed data are used to test the hypothesis     

Optimal Dissent in Organizations

We model an organization as a two-agent hierarchy: an informed Decision Maker in charge of selecting projects and a (possibly) uninformed Implementer in charge of their execution. Both have intrinsic preferences over projects. This paper models the costs and benefits of divergence between their preferences, that is, dissent within the organization. Dissent is useful to (1) foster the use of objective (and sometimes private) information in decision making and (2) give credibility to the Decision Maker's choices. However, dissent comes at the cost of hurting the Implementer's intrinsic motivation, thereby impairing organizational efficiency. We show that dissent can be optimal, in particular, when information is useful and uncertainty is high. Moreover, dissent remains an optimal organizational form even when Implementers can choose their employer or when Decision Makers have real authority over hiring decisions.

Workers do, and managers figure out what to do.
                                            F. Knight (1921)

     

Innovation in Nonprofit Organizations

Innovation as the driving force behind the economic growth of high-income countries has almost exclusively been researched for the private enterprise sector. Nonproft organizations as a growing sector also have to be assessed for their contribution. They are first grouped by their different outputs (proximity to public versus private good provision). Next, for each output group fields of activities are identified, which exhibit differences in management regimes and incentive structure. This leads to hypotheses (and some empirical evidence) on innovative behavior and on barriers to innovation. The result: Their potential for contributing is far from being fully used.     

论企业管理中的惰性与创新

在当今复杂劳动远远多于、重要于简单劳动,而“工作量化制”面对管理中的惰性问题却束手无策的创新的时代,加强对管理中惰性产生的文化因素、体制因素、心理因素、本性因素等因素的研究,努力培育创新企业文化,建立创新型组织和有效的激励体系,不断用创新的积极性克服惰性,对实现企业管理的科学化有着较为重要的现实意义。     

全球化、国际非政府组织与中国民间组织的发展

近二十年来数目可观的国际民间组织、项目及资金进入中国既是中国国内改革深化、经济发展和社会需求所致,也是国际社会积极推进中国公民社会发展的结果。本文分析全球社团崛起对中国政府NGO政策及中国第三部门发展的影响,本土社团与国际组织的相互作用,以及国际民间组织在中国的局限性。国际民间组织对于中国NGOs,特别是草根组织的成长有明确的积极作用。然而,目前中国本土社团与国际NGOs的关系是不平衡的,尤其表现为很多草根组织对国际援助的依赖。不改变这种状况将对中国社团的长远发展产生负面影响。     

媒体经济和媒体组织

文章对媒体经济的研究对象和研究领域作一般性的阐述 ,认为媒体经济的研究包括两个主要范围 :媒体研究的经济学理论框架 ,包含政治经济、消费者和企业的决策过程经及媒体的经济属性等 ;媒体的研究框架 ,包含媒体企业的运营以及全球化的影响     

我国非政府组织发展存在的问题及原因分析

改革开放以来,中国的非政府组织得到了迅猛发展,并参与到社会各个领域,成为现代化建设的重要力量。但是,我国非政府组织的发展目前还面临许多问题,还不能充分发挥其促进社会协调发展的作用。文章对我国非政府组织发展中存在的问题及原因进行了分析,以期能够健康地发展。     

An Evaluation of Inertia Models of Unemployment

Two approaches have been used to model unemployment. The first, conventional, approach involves linking the unemployment outcome to observed indices of productivity, structural factors and discrimination such as educational attainment, location and birthplace. The second approach, the inertia model, involves using a person's labour market history as a way of including in unemployment models information on the 'unobservables' that influence employability. This paper evaluates the performance of both models of unemployment. The results provide unambiguous support for the inertia model when modelling unemployment. The inertia model has higher explanatory power, higher within-sample prediction rate success and fewer out-of-sample forecasting errors than the conventional model. The estimates from the inertia model can be used to provide quite accurate predictions of the risk of becoming unemployed. This is important if individuals at high risk of becoming unemployed are to be targeted for labour market assistance.     

组织间合作创新:基于组织形式的梳理

在专业化分工越来越深化的背景下,创新很难由单个组织实现.通过整合组织间的分布性知识更易实现创新.在组织间合作创新中,组织形式的选择由于涉及路径依赖、知识转移、公平性等问题而成为合作创新成功的障碍.本文认为,在合作创新中,组织形式的选择应当考虑一体化程度、网络中心性、治理机制和公平性等因素,以促进组织问的合作创新.     

民间环保组织与生态社区建设

生态社区是当代各国社区建设的一个重要趋势,民间环保组织是以保护环境为宗旨的非政府、非营利组织。基于对生态环境和可持续发展的共同关注,民间环保组织将在生态社区建设中扮演重要的角色。     

虚拟组织与专业市场创新

专业市场这种古老的市场形态，在西方发达国家工业化早期就已存在。至今在许多发展中国家，专业市场仍然是一种主要的市场制度。但是，中国农村工业化过程中专业市场数量之多、分布之广、在整个经济体系中地位之重要，却是人类历史上前所未有的。近年来，随着我国市场经济体制框架的逐步确立和产业组织结构的转换，专业市场在许多地区经济发展中的功能和地位出现弱化，特别是加入WTO后流通领域的扩大开放，更使得专业市场的发展面临严峻的考验。因此，如何应对一系列的挑战，实现传统专业市场的创新，已经成为当前亟待解决的重大理论和现…     

组织学习、惯性演化与企业战略变革

笔者基于文献回顾,确立了组织学习-组织惯性-企业战略变革的研究模式,分析了组织学习与组织惯性的基本理论,建构了组织惯性的五种作用力模型,确立了组织学习、惯性演化与战略变革的效用模式,分析了组织学习对惯性演化和战略变革的积极效用.     

游客消费者惰性及和谐旅游市场构筑

旅游业的高速发展使得旅游市场中的"非和谐"现象日益严重,欺诈游客现象盛行,但是由于游客消费者惰性的存在使得游客鲜有投诉,这是法律制度不健全、游客主权意识不强、消费心理机能以及旅游企业的短视经营造成的.本文分析了游客消费者惰性产生的原因及其危害,然后提出必须切实加强法制监管、行业监管、舆论监管和企业内部监管,维护游客的合法权益,有效克服游客消费者惰性,营造"和谐"的旅游市场环境.     

今日世界中的公共管理：组织与市场

一、对复杂组织的研究 今晚我演讲的主题是:使复杂组织(complex organization)成为实现人类目的的有效工具的机制.这个主题与约翰·高斯对技术创新与政府组织变革之间互动关系的研究有着非常密切的联系,因此我应该这样提问:哪些种类的组织结构有利于变革和创新.我要讨论的两个对象是私人经济机构(制度)和政府.