Dynamics of Wheat Prices in the Wake of Market Reforms: The Case of Pakistan

Using Autoregressive Conditional Heteroskedastic (ARCH) method, this paper examines the effects of market reforms on the distribution of real mean prices and their variability before and after reforms. It is found that market-oriented reforms benefited producers and consumers alike. Empirical evidences, generally, support theoretical assertion that mean prices decline in most urban areas and increase in those markets that are located in surplus producing areas. The results also showed that market reforms lead to more price volatility.     

More reforms,less innovation? The impact of structural reform histories on innovation-oriented cultures in public organizations

The environments of public organizations have become substantially volatile due to economic and societal changes, requiring organizations to continuously adapt and to develop an innovation-oriented culture. In response to the multitude of challenges posed by this volatile environment, politicians in inter alia the executive and parliament impose structural reforms upon public organizations, implying that these organizations might be confronted with a series of structural reforms over their lifetime. This paper advances that a history of repeated and frequent structural reforms, irrespective of the underlying drivers of these reforms, has a negative effect on the innovation-orientedness of the organizational culture. We explore the link between an organization’s history of structural reforms and the degree to which the culture within these organizations is innovation-oriented. Results indicate that organizational turmoil generated by repeated structural reforms reduces innovativeness and suggest that too many structural reforms imposed in a too short time span will have detrimental side effects.     

Administrative reforms as routines

Administrative reforms are sometimes perceived as dramatic organizational changes solving administrative problems once and for all. In this article, it is argued that reforms reflect organizational stability more than organizational change. Reforms are driven by problems, solutions and forgetfulness, which are all common phenomena in modem organizations. Reforms are also driven by reforms—reforms are highly self-referential. Organizations may have reasons for avoiding reforms, for instance because reforms may increase a preference for values that the organization has particular difficulty in achieving rather than improving performance. Paradoxically, one effective way of stopping reforms is to try to implement them and to propose new reforms, which is a further reason of why reforms are common in organizations.     

The spirit of management reforms

Abstract

The article reports on a comparative case study of the administrative cultures of the Australian (Queensland) and the Hungarian governmental administration. The basic finding of the study is that the culture profiles of the two administrative (sub-)systems are surprisingly similar. This finding is used to conclude that the organizational level of administrative culture is unlikely to play a significant role in shaping New Public Management (NPM) reforms. Moreover, this conclusion sheds a cloud of doubt onto the claim frequently found in NPM literature that NPM reforms involve a replacement of ‘outmoded, bureaucratic thinking’ with a ‘culture of efficiency and entrepreneurship’.     

latin lessons

How can the perennial problem of inflation in Latin America be cured? Eduardo Belgrano, a Mexican economist, argues that Latin American governments have always found it difficult to match spending with revenue and have found it easy to resort to the inflation tax. Conventional currency reforms have regularly failed to work and the solution is to adapt Hayek's proposal for competition in currencies.     

Do health system reforms stand a chance?

While most major reforms of health systems fail, those that succeed are motivated by politicians' quest for reducing the health burden on their budget in response to a shift in voters' preferences away from public health. An Edgeworth box is used to depict their preferences, in addition to those of (potential) patients and health‐care providers. Politicians are found to severely constrain the area of mutual advantage, suggesting that only minor reforms are possible unless they promise to lower health‐care expenditure. An efficiency‐enhancing change that would enlarge the box and hence the area of mutual advantage would be to suppress the requirement imposed on health insurers to purchase domestically, rather than being free to directly import health‐care services and drugs.     

Non-wage benefits,corporate ownership and firm performance in post-communist economies: evidence from Ukraine

The economic reforms in the transition economies of Central and Eastern Europe have fundamentally reshaped ownership and governance of economic production, notably through the privatization of former state-owned enterprises. These reforms were expected to transform management practices by displacing ‘cradle-to-grave’ welfare arrangements administered by state-owned enterprises. Using data drawn from two large samples of Ukrainian establishments, we investigate, in two different time points, the relationship between non-wage benefits and firm performance during the period of transition to a market economy (1994–2004). We found that non-wage benefits continued to be a critical feature of HRM practices in Ukraine during this period, and were positively associated with firm performance.     

DESIRABILITY AND SEQUENCE OF LIBERALIZATION AND STRUCTURAL REFORM POLICIES IN A MODEL WITH INFORMAL SECTOR

The paper develops a three-sector general equilibrium model with informal sector and examines the welfare effects of liberalization and structural reform in the presence of labor and capital market distortions. It attempts to determine a credible sequence of reforms that may be the most welfare-enhancing, since implementation of reforms in all the markets at a single stage may be neither feasible nor optimal. Foreign capital is welfare-improving only in the presence of labor market distortion, while welfare deteriorates if the capital market is distorted. While tariff and capital market reforms may be welfare-enhancing in the absence of labor market distortion, labor market reform may intensify the formal-informal wage gap and have a worsening effect on welfare in the presence of tariff distortion and capital market imperfection. One of the plausible sequences of reforms may be to initially undertake tariff reform followed by capital and labor market reforms, respectively.     

Commodity market reform in Africa: some recent experience

Since the early 1980s, dramatic changes in export commodity markets, shocks associated with resulting price declines and changing views on the role of the state have ushered in widespread reforms to agricultural commodity markets in Africa. The reforms significantly reduced government participation in the marketing and pricing of commodities. This paper examines the background, causes, process and consequences of these reforms and derives lessons for successful reforms from experiences in markets for four commodities important to Africa—cocoa, coffee, cotton, and sugar. The commodity focus of the paper highlights the special features associated with these markets that affect the reform process. The paper complements the current literature on market reforms in Africa, where grain market studies are more common. We suggest that the types of market interventions prior to reform are more easily classified by crop than by country. Consequently, there are significant commodity-specific differences in the initial conditions and in the outcomes of reforms related to these markets. However, there are general lessons as well. We find that the key consequences of reform have been significant changes in or emergence of marketing institutions, and a significant shift of political and economic power from public to private sector. In cases where interventions were greatest and reforms most complete, producers have benefited from receiving a larger share of export prices. Additionally, we conclude that the adjustment costs of reform can be reduced in most cases by better understanding the detailed and idiosyncratic relationships between the commodity subsector, private markets, and public services. Finally, while there are significant costs to market-dependent reforms, experiences suggest that they are a necessary step toward a dynamic commodity sector based on private initiative. Indeed, this is particularly true in countries and sectors where interventions were greatest and market-supporting institutions the weakest.     

‘Klin’-ing up: Effects of Polish tax reforms on those in and on those out

In 2007 and 2008 Polish governments introduced a series of reforms which led to a substantial reduction in the tax “wedge” (in Polish: “klin”) on labour. These consisted of reductions in the disability rate of social security contributions (SSCs) and an introduction of an income tax credit for families with children. We show that the SSCs reforms on their own brought much greater reductions in the tax burden compared to a widely discussed 15% “flat tax”, despite a very similar simulated cost. When considered together the package of introduced reforms reduced the mean ATR on total labour cost from 41.6% to 35.7%. This compares to the mean ATR of 39.6% which would result from the introduction of the “flat tax”. In the analysis we present the effects of the reforms both for the employed and for the non-employed populations. The latter analysis is done in such a way as to account for the entire (simulated) distribution of wages of the non-employed and shows interesting differences between the effects of reforms on employed and non-employed individuals. We argue that to fully appreciate the effect of reductions in labour taxation it is important to bear in mind that one of the reasons for introducing them is to make employment more likely for those who currently do not work, and demonstrate that the introduced package has had a particularly important effect on non-employed second earners. Given the extent of the reductions in the “klin” it is somewhat surprising that so far so little attention has been given to the recent Polish reforms.     

国企混改与财务价值创造

国企拥有资源优势和政策优势,但经营效率不高增值效果不明显.国企进行混合所有制改革,能否提高经营效率和增加企业价值?研究发现:只"混"不"合"、只"混"不"改"的国企改革,不但不能提高投资效率,而且降低筹资效率,毁损企业价值;既"混"又"合"、既"混"又"改","混"、"合"与"改"的有机统一的国企改革,既能提高投资效率...     

从文化视角看中国会计改革进程

本文基于Hofstede的文化五维度模型和Gray的会计亚文化理论，探讨了文化对中国会计改革可能产生的影响。调查问卷的统计结果表明，不确定性规避、集体主义、权力距离等文化维度，都可以在不同程度上解释我国会计改革过去进展状况。笔者认为，文化是影响会计改革进程的一个不可忽视的因素，深入了解我国传统文化可以使人们以更加包容的心态去看待会计改革进程。     

Public Management Reforms and Social Cohesion in Europe: The view from the top

Drawing upon data from a survey of senior public managers in ten European countries, we examine the relationship between public management reforms and perceptions of social cohesion. We find a positive connection between reforms which treat service users as customers and government openness (outward-downward reforms), and managers’ perceptions of the civic culture and social solidarity within their countries. However, for reforms, such as privatization, with an outward-upward orientation, a negative association with social solidarity is observed. The theoretical and practical implications of our findings are discussed.     

Were the Hartz Reforms Responsible for the Improved Performance of the German Labour Market?

From 2005 to 2011 employment rose and unemployment rates declined considerably in Germany. This favourable development followed the labour market reforms initiated in 2003, and there has been a tendency to attribute the improved labour market performance to those reforms. Causal micro‐evaluations of the various measures, however, show hardly any effects on variables that can be related to employment. Rather, it seems that employment increased in response to a process of wage moderation that had already begun in the 1990s. It is possible that this moderation was itself partially a product of the reforms, but this needs further investigation.     

Bank valuation in new EU member countries

This paper studies the role of institutional reforms in affecting bank valuation in new European Union (EU) member countries. It takes advantage of the dynamic nature of institutional reforms in transition economies and explores the causal effects of those reforms on banks’ Tobin's Q over the period of 1997–2008. Using a difference-in-difference approach, the paper shows that Tobin's Q increases substantially after these countries reform their legal institutions and liberalize banking. However, it decreases after stock market reforms. After further examination of the interactive relationships between different reforms and bank valuation, it is observed that when the banking reform is well implemented, legal reform can have a stronger impact on banks’ Tobin's Q. On the other hand, banking reform and security market reform has a substitutive relationship. The analysis also suggests that foreign ownership, market power, and asset diversification significantly affect Tobin's Q. These results are robust even after simultaneously controlling for equity risk.     

论尊重广大职工在改革中的主导作用

文章论述了尊重广大职工在企业改革中的主导作用,对于我们党更好地代表中国最广大人民的根本利益,团结和依靠最广大的职工,搞好国有企业的改革,具有深远的意义。     

ECONOMIC REFORM IN EASTERN EUROPE

Abstract. Since the early 1960s, reforms in the traditional centralized model of a planned economy have been debated. In most of Eastern Europe, reforms have been confined to cautious ones seeking to improve central planning. But in Hungary, and to a small degree elsewhere, more radical reforms have taken root. These retain elements of planning but also introduce the institutions and policies needed to support a more active market orientation for the economy. Such reforms encounter limits when they begin to threaten, or call into question, established political structures and it is an open question how much further reforms can proceed in Hungary without political change.     

Beyond public management

The Netherlands are often considered an excellent example of ‘new public management’ reforms. Especially the ‘Tilburg model’ of management reform that took place in Dutch local government in the mid-1980s has become internationally renowned. In this review of public management reforms that took place in Dutch local and national government during the 1980s and 1990s we will show that managerial reforms were not the only dominant story in the The Netherlands. Dutch administration experienced a shift in frame of reference beyond public management. This review will not concentrate on ‘factual reforms’ but rather on reform ideas. This study departs from the empirical positivist approach where ‘objective facts’ play the central role. There is no one and single ‘objective truth’ about reforms. Managerial reform seemed the dominant story. In ‘reality’ there was a variety of reform ideas.     

Indigenous Peoples’ Health Care: New approaches to contracting and accountability at the public administration frontier

Abstract

This article analyses reforms to contracting and accountability for indigenous primary health care organizations in Canada, New Zealand, and Australia. The reforms are presented as comparative case studies, the common reform features identified and their implications analysed.

The reforms share important characteristics. Each proceeds from implicit recognition that indigenous organizations are ‘co-principals’ rather than simply agents in their relationship with government funders and regulators. There is a common tendency towards more relational forms of contracting; and tentative attempts to reconceptualize accountability. These ‘frontier’ cases have broad implications for social service contracting.     

Labor market rigidities and economic efficiency: Evidence from Spain

In the 1990s, Spain approved two labor reforms aimed at reducing the unemployment level and its volatility. Overall, these reforms involved two measures designed to induce firms to meet their labor needs via adjustment of permanent positions: restricting the use of temporary workers and reducing the amount of severance payments. This paper empirically assesses the impact of these reforms on the allocative efficiency of the labor input employing Petrin and Sivadasan's (2011) value of the marginal product-marginal cost gap methodology. We find a statistically significant increase in within-firm permanent labor gaps following the reforms. These results suggest that restrictions on the use of temporary workers (increasing the probability of hiring fragile workers for permanent positions), when coupled with uncertainty about enforcement of reduced severance payments, could more than offset the reduction in severance payments; hence, the net effect of the reforms could be to increase adjustment costs for permanent positions.