Nominal bargaining power, selection protocol, and discounting in legislative bargaining

The comparative static predictions of the Baron and Ferejohn [Baron, D.P., and Ferejohn, J.A., (1989). Bargaining in legislatures, American Political Science Review 83 (4), 1181-1206] model better organize behavior in legislative bargaining experiments than Gamson's Law. Regressions similar to those employed in field data produce results seemingly in support of Gamson's Law (even when using data generated by simulating agents who behave according to the Baron-Ferejohn model), but this is determined by the selection protocol which recognizes voting blocks in proportion to the number of votes controlled. Proposer power is not nearly as strong as predicted in the closed rule Baron and Ferejohn model, as coalition partners refuse to take the small shares given by the continuation value of the game. Discounting pushes behavior in the direction predicted by Baron and Ferejohn but has a much smaller effect than predicted.     

Judges and Taxes: Judicial Review,Judicial Independence and the Size of Government

The study investigates how judicial review of policy and judicial independence affect the relative size of government. Judicial oversight of policy is the authority of courts to check the legality of policy measures and annul measures which are incompatible with the constitution or are enacted without following the procedures laid down by the law. Using a model of constitutional political economy, where policy making is subject to judicial oversight, it is predicted that the relative size of the public sector decreases as judicial review and judicial independence increase. The theoretical predictions are tested in an international cross section sample of 52 countries. Controlling for the effects of real income, age dependency, openness of the economy, the legal origins of a country and other socio-political variables the results show that the checks and balances provided by the judiciary lead to a smaller relative size of taxes in the economy.JEL Classifications: D70, D72, D74, D78, H30, K41.     

试论恶意透支信用卡犯罪及其立法完善

恶意透支犯罪是当前经济领域中利用信用卡作为犯罪工具的一种犯罪,是信用卡诈骗罪最常见的一种表现形式,其特征相对其他信用卡犯罪有特殊之处,因此有必要对恶意透支进行分析,予以准确界定,以便协调立法冲突.本文围绕恶意透支信用卡犯罪中的一些疑难问题做了探讨,并为完善立法提出了建议,以求共识.     

试论恶意透支信用卡犯罪及其立法完善

恶意透支犯罪是当前经济领域中利用信用卡作为犯罪工具的一种犯罪，是信用卡诈骗罪最常见的一种表现形式，其特征相对其他信用卡犯罪有特殊之处，因此有必要对恶意透支进行分析，予以准确界定，以便协调立法冲突。本文围绕恶意透支信用卡犯罪中的一些疑难问题做了探讨，并为完善立法提出了建议，以求共识。     

论法官能动司法的功能和规制

能动司法已成为理论界和实务界讨论的热点。司法能动主义的源头在美国,与其联邦最高法院的司法实践紧密联系。在中国,能动司法是由决策者自上而下、回应社会需求而提出的,并贯彻到各级法院的司法实践活动中。从现有的理论研究成果来看,关于能动司法的概括或解释是多元化的。在我国司法大改革的背景下,法官发挥司法能动性有利于填补法律缺陷、提高司法效率、实现司法公正和树立积极主动、司法为民的基本理念。但是,也必须正视法官能动司法的两面性,可以通过完善立法、构建司法能动制度和推进法官职业化建设来规制法官能动司法的实施,以保障司法公正的最终实现。     

Judicial error and cooperation

Cooperation can be induced by an authority with the power to mete out sanctions for free riders, but law enforcement is prone to error. This paper experimentally analyzes preferences for and consequences of errors in formal sanctions against free riders in a public goods game. With type I errors, even full contributors to the public good may be punished. With type II errors, free riders may go unpunished. We find that judicial error undermines cooperation and that the effects of type I and II errors are symmetric. To investigate their relative (dis-)like for error, we let subjects choose what type of error to prevent. We find that subjects prefer type II over type I errors. However, the strength of preferences for preventing type I errors is fully in line with a motive to maximize income and does not indicate any additional psychological or fairness bias against type I errors.     

Board oversight of executive performance and compensation

Making sure the relative roles of the board and management are clear and agreed upon is becoming more important as market and regulatory forces compel boards to govern at levels of detail once considered micromanagement, but are now required and necessary in the current environment of heightened governance accountability. A clear understanding of each other's roles and responsibilities is step one in building a solid partnership between the board and chief executive. A second element of building a strong foundation for the board-CEO relationship is taking time early on to establish mutual expectations about working together. The board's responsibilities in CEO performance management and compensation include setting performance expectations and goals that are clear and measurable and coaching and motivating the CEO. When a CEO fails, one of the most important steps for the board to take is to look in the mirror and commit to the rigorous due diligence needed to avoid future mistakes. Boards should always have CEO succession on their agenda.     

Tenure,promotion and executive remuneration

Commentators frequently remark on the need to pay high levels of chief executive officer remuneration to attract, motivate and retain the best executives for Britain's leading companies. This paper presents the results of an empirical investigation into tenure, promotion and executive remuneration. The remuneration of the chief executive officers at some of Britain's largest businesses is examined. In the majority of cases the CEO had not been lured away from rivals but had risen through the internal labour market, often after a long–term employment relationship. Moreover, long job tenure and internal promotion were associated with higher levels of pay. It is concluded that understanding of this controversial issue will be improved if it is recognized that a part of current executive pay may be a reward for previous successful performance.     

The informational effects of competition and collusion in legislative politics

We use a mechanism design approach to study the organization of interest groups in an informational model of lobbying. Interest groups influence the legislature only by communicating private information on their preferences and not by means of monetary transfers. Interest groups have private information on their ideal points in a one-dimensional policy space and may either compete or adopt more collusive behaviors. Optimal policies result from a trade-off between imposing rules which are non-responsive to the groups' preferences and flexibility that pleases groups better. Within a strong coalition, interest groups credibly share information which facilitates communication of their joint interests, helps screening by the legislature and induces flexible policies responsive to the groups' joint interests (an informativeness effect). Competing interest groups better transmit information on their individual preferences (a screening effect). The socially and privately optimal organization of lobbying favors competition between groups only when their preferences are not too congruent with those of the legislature. With more congruence, a strong coalition is preferred. Finally, within a weak coalition, interest groups must design incentive compatible collusive mechanisms to share information. Such weak coalitions are always inefficient.     

National Judicial Power and the Dormant Commerce Clause

We develop a game in which a court monitors states as they regulatetrade among themselves. Contrary to commentators who see SupremeCourt oversight of state burdens on interstate commerce as theproduct of a powerfully ascendant court, we argue that the "dormantCommerce Clause" (DCC) originates as the strategic product ofan institutionally weak court. We provide three lines of argument.First, we refute the notion that merely observing the courtruling against state governments and those governments complyingwith its ruling is evidence of judicial power. Second, we showthat the equilibria of our "weak court" model directly impliesthe doctrinal contours of the DCC while the ascendancy hypothesisdoes not. Finally, we provide evidence that the court announceda weaker version of the DCC doctrine than sincerely preferredby pivotal justices on the court. Our arguments invite a revisedunderstanding of the role of the court in the development ofthe American political system.     

Dynamic legislative decision making when interest groups control the agenda

We consider dynamic decision making in a legislature, in which in each period legislators vote between the status quo (previous period?s policy) and a new bill. However, the agenda formation process is captured by interest groups, that is, the new bill on the agenda is determined by an all-pay auction among these groups. We show that convergence to the median voter of the legislature arises if interest groups are patient enough but not necessarily otherwise. We characterize the bound on the speed of convergence in a family of stationary equilibria in which policy bounces between right-wing and left-wing policies. We also show that convergence may be faster if organized interest groups represent only one side of the policy space, e.g., when only business and not consumer interests are organized.     

Newer compensation practices for the nurse executive

Today's health care leaders must be prepared differently and have a different set of expectations in their roles. More creative approaches to assuring both commitment and productivity, such as tying rewards to performance and personal accomplishment, are emerging.     

公司僵局状态下的司法介入探析

作为封闭公司特有现象的公司僵局，可以通过司法介入打破。本文在论证司法介入打破公司僵局的理论依据的前提下，分析了美国的相关立法例，对“以购买替代解散”的补救规则进行了阐释，对股东解散请求权的行使以及附随的清算义务等进行了分析。     

司法权的本义

一般观点认为,是"马伯里诉麦迪逊"一案创设了司法审查权.本文批驳了这一观点.尽管宪法中没有关于司法审查权的明确规定,但是通过对宪法缔造者们在制宪会议、州批准会议上以及批准之后的实际言论的原意主义解释的分析,无可辩驳的结论是,司法权的本义中包括了司法审查权."马伯里诉麦迪逊"一案只是将这一本义更加清晰地揭示出来.     

Making executive politics mutually productive and fair

Winner-take-all elections for executive offices create high-stakes electoral conflict that distorts policy-making and constitution-making behavior. When the stakes are high, so long as it increases the chances of victory, office-seekers seek to shift perceived benefits toward and burdens away from potentially pivotal participants. This can entail the strategic allocation of spoils, the strategic selection of public policies that mobilize one’s base or divide the opposition, the strategic shifting of benefits into the present and costs into the future, and the strategic deception of the uninformed. This paper proposes a “turn-taking institution,” an electoral system in which the whole term is only awarded to a sufficiently inclusive supermajority coalition; if no coalition qualifies, the plurality winner and the runner-up take alternating one-year turns for the length of the term. This institution lowers the stakes of electoral conflict by roughly an order of magnitude, and fosters the formation, enforcement and adaptation of mutually productive policy-making and constitution-making behaviors. Critically, these results hold up even when voters and policy-makers are impatient, and when only short-run commitments are possible.