Institutional Environments, Employer Practices, and States in Liberal Market Economies

This article draws on the new institutionalism in economics, sociology, and political studies in order to establish a foundation for analyzing how states shape employer human resource management and union relations. It then reviews and extends the available literature on this topic, establishing how, in addition to legal regulation, states help to shape the cognitive and normative rules that undergird employer decision processes, the social and economic environment within which employers act, and ultimately, the relations of authority constituting the employment relation itself and hence employer policy orientations. The article concludes with a discussion of the prospects for state policy initiatives in view of established employer paradigms, institutional logics, and state traditions, and identifies possibilities for further work in this area.
A neoclassical world would be a jungle, and no society would be viable. Douglas North (1981:11)     

Race,ethnicity, and telecommunications policy issues of access and representation: Centering communities of color and their concerns

This paper examines how and why activist groups representing marginalized communities of color are increasingly engaging in communications technology policy issues, particularly in relation to issues of digital access and representation. It explores three distinct but related case studies to disentangle the issues and concerns of a range of communities of color, and the challenges and opportunities for their advocates in navigating the highly technical communications technology policy arena: the first case study, which centers on the NAACP's original opposition to net neutrality, reveals the primacy of issues surrounding the “digital divide” to populations of color, and the difficulties of engaging in technical conversations surrounding Internet governance when issues of access persist. Meanwhile, the second case reviews the campaign by Free Press to promote set-top box liberalization as an issue of representation and diversity to both policymakers and citizens. The final case, which examines the work of the Tribal International Carrier to build an alternative internet service network for Native populations, highlights the precarity which organizations must strategically navigate in order to mitigate the influence of both the state and large corporations over Internet policy issues in order to both serve and represent their constituents. In all, this paper presents and extends upon a novel approach to communications policy research, foregrounding the need to integrate critical race frameworks and, relatedly, to center the breadth, depth, and lived experiences of communities of color, which can therein facilitate more inclusive digital media and communication environments and policy structures.     

Ex ante regulation and co-investment in the transition to next generation access

Investments in next generation access networks (NGANs) ask for a new set of regulatory remedies. This paper contributes to this debate by focusing on three issues: the migration from the legacy copper network to the NGA infrastructure, and how wholesale pricing regulation might affect this process; the introduction of differentiated wholesale remedies according to geographical differences in NGAN deployment; the impact of co-investment decisions on market outcomes and their interplay with access regulation. Using the recent economic literature, arguments and possible guidelines are proposed, which might be useful to regulators and policy makers.     

Online RPM and MFN Under Antitrust Law and Economics

The legal framing of a firm’s pricing strategy can determine whether it constitutes online resale price maintenance (RPM) or online most favored nation (MFN). Together, cases that involve online RPM and MFN can be viewed as a natural experiment of how antitrust economics and law may adapt to an online world. Thus far, legal theories that have been inconsistent with economic theories have dictated enforcement across jurisdictions, which has led to confusion that thwarts potentially efficient business practices. This paper distinguishes issues of online RPM from traditional RPM and online RPM from online MFN. We apply the economics learning to RPM and analyze the antitrust cases of online RPM and MFN to date in the United States, Europe, and Australia. Finally, we offer policy recommendations that reduce the confusion in current legal doctrine.     

Immigration,Labour Markets and Employment Relations: Problems and Prospects

In this review essay, I argue that immigration presents employment researchers with a promising strategic research site because it raises a number of theoretically significant problems with mainstream economic approaches to labour and labour markets. Despite the tendency to view economic migrants as homo economicus personified, I argue that immigration brings the institutional nature of labour markets into sharp relief as it exposes, among other things, the influence of the state, processes of labour market segmentation, and the role of trade union policy and practice. Having identified a number of empirical anomalies that contradict neoclassical economic theory, I proceed to sketch out three areas where a more institutionally oriented approach should prove more fruitful.     

Effective Organisational Response by Corporates to India's Liberalisation and Globalisation

The Indian economy began to liberalise and globalise in earnest beginning in 1991. The principal elements of the economy's structural adjustment that have created a far more competitive and turbulent but also opportunity-rich market environment are described. Based on prior Western and Indian research, a model of effective corporate coping with such a market environment has been developed. The model argues that the greater use of policy frameworks representing entrepreneurial, organic, professional, and participatory styles of management, and mechanisms of uncertainty reduction, differentiation, and integration tend to enhance corporate performance in such an environment, while their absence or low usage depresses it. Four sources of information are utilised to assess the model: published information on how Indian corporates have generally coped with economic liberalisation and globalisation, three corporate case studies, data from a recent study of 139 Indian corporates, and another study of 54 Indian corporates. All four sources broadly converge in their support for the model. Several issues relating to the contingency and strategic choice perspectives, and the generalisability, applicability, acceptability, and the diffusion of policy frameworks and redesign mechanisms are discussed.     

Food prices and food policy analysis in LDCs

Opinions have been polarized on the role of food prices in economic development. Structuralist analysis argues that food prices are irrelevant to long-term development, but neoclassical theorists believe that food prices may be a critical factor. This article attempts to reconcile these views, reports on the differential impacts of food prices in Indonesia and discusses the role of food prices in the policy process.     

“The more,the merrier” or “less is more”? How the number of issues addressed in B2B sales negotiations affects dyadic and seller economic outcomes

With a mixed-methods approach, this study analyzes how varying the number of issues in business-to-business (B2B) sales negotiations affects negotiation processes and outcomes. A qualitative interview study with B2B negotiators (N = 46) reveals that more issues increase complexity but offer more possibilities for concessions. Sellers see benefits in increasing the number of issues addressed, whereas buyers are ambiguous about whether negotiating more issues will benefit their economic outcomes. A second experimental study (N = 97 dyads) tests whether negotiating a different number of issues (four, eight, or between four and eight) produces different absolute and relative dyadic economic outcomes and sellers' shares of the joint profits in one-on-one negotiations. In absolute terms, more negotiation issues produce larger negotiation pies; fewer issues facilitate more accurate information processing, leading to relatively more integrative agreements. For sellers, increasing the number of issues increases their share of the joint profit, because buyers are more willing to concede on the overall price of the deal.     

Delusions Regarding the Proper Role of Markets and Antitrust Policy

William Curran and Donald Wellington have criticized capitalism,neoclassical economics and antitrust policy. This article defendscapitalistic institutions against both the strong forms ofsocialism as practiced in the former Soviet Union and againstits milder forms as practiced in the welfare states of Europe.The article endorses some of Curran's and Wellington's concernsabout neoclassical economics, but recommends that neoclassicaleconomics be adapted to make it more useful for scientificresearch rather than abandoned outright. Some suggestions areoffered in this direction. The article totally rejects the notionthat antitrust policy can be a tool for correcting the ills ofcapitalism as Curran and Wellington see them, and argues that thegoal of antitrust policy should be to improve capitalism not todestroy it.     

Network-centric digital development in Korea: Origins,growth and prospects

South Korea is currently the world leader in digital network infrastructure and the leading example of ICT-driven development. However, the explanation of how and why Korea accomplished these things is not clearly apparent from a review of mainstream scholarship. A deeper understanding of Korea’s “miracle on the Han” requires more historical, cultural, political and social context. This study addresses questions of how, when and why a nation whose infrastructures were utterly destroyed at the 1953 cessation of hostilities in the Korean War could emerge as the world’s digital network leader. It examines policy issues bearing on digitization of networks, network architecture and network technologies, along with broader context in which these policies were considered, drafted and implemented. Chronologically, the study explains the origins of digital development in the revolutionary decade of the 1980s, Korea’s rise to world broadband leader in the 1990s and its ambitious plans for next generation networks. The study concludes with a review of policy “lessons”, including both successes and failures, that may be drawn from the Korean experience.     

Policy implications of technology for detecting P2P and copyright violations

The effectiveness of many proposed policies regarding both online copyright protection and network neutrality depend on the extent to which it is technically possible to detect peer-to-peer file sharing (P2P), the transfer of copyrighted files, or both. There are many detection approaches, some performed primarily by network operators and some by application-layer agents. This paper describes capabilities, limitations, privacy issues, and policy implications of detection technologies and their countermeasures, in part through quantitative analysis of empirical data. Different approaches are better for different purposes. Network operators are well-positioned to estimate how widespread copyright violations are, but application-layer detection from outside entities has important advantages when the purpose is punishment. Detection is also imperfect, so policies should require more transparency regarding how it is done than we see today. It is shown that, although network operators may not detect every transfer, and they typically miss more video than audio, they can identify most individuals who share copyrighted files via P2P after several weeks of monitoring provided that traffic is unencrypted, which is useful for some purposes. However, it is also shown that encryption is already in use, and it effectively prevents network operators from detecting transfers of copyrighted content. Thus, if network operators are held responsible for monitoring illegal file sharing, there is a tension between using detection to identify violators of copyright law for punishment, which may motivate even greater use of encryption, and using detection for other purposes such as creating fair compensation schemes for copyright-holders, warning users that they may be violating copyright law, or allocating network resources. Alternatively, there are forms of detection that are not evaded through encryption, and application-layer agents rather than network operators are primarily responsible for these. These copyright policy issues are intertwined with network neutrality policy in subtle ways. Network neutrality rules do not protect illegal transfers of copyrighted content, but if network operators are responsible for enforcement (as in “graduated response”) then regulators must determine when it is reasonable to terminate or degrade service based on allegations of copyright violation given the limitations of detection technology to prove those allegations. Allegations of copyright violation should be considered invalid unless they are accompanied with information about how detection was performed and an opportunity for rebuttal. Such transparency has been routinely lacking in both laws and industry agreements.     

Beyond the Flexibility/Security Trade‐Off: Reconciling Confident Consumers with Insecure Workers

The article proposes an analysis of labour markets and related social policy that corrects the supply‐side emphasis that has dominated economic policy since the decline of Keynesian approaches in the late 1970s. It starts from a potential tension between the apparent need of economies for both flexible workers and confident consumers. This can be resolved through three different approaches: separating insecure workers from secure consumers, separating consumption from labour incomes, and integrating flexibility and security within the labour market itself. These approaches are played out across four different contexts: place, time, externalizing problems on to minorities within a given community, internalizing problems within the community. Up to 19 different public policies and corporate practices are identified, occupying different positions on the framework. These go considerably beyond the issues of industrial relations institutions and related social policy that are the normal focus of labour market studies.     

Introducing cable television into Hong Kong : Political and economic implications

This paper seeks to evaluate and predict the impact of the introduction of cable television into Hong Kong, a densely populated and highly dynamic Asian metropolis currently under British administration. The discussion will focus on how the coming of cable communication will impact on the ownership and economic structure of the broadcasting industry, with particular reference to international participation; public policy issues concerning economic structure and programming of the cable system; and the implications for the period of Hong Kong's political transition from the UK to China.     

The two dimensions of policy impacts on economic cohesion: Concept and illustration for the CAP

Given the growing importance of cohesion policy within the European Union (EU) during the last two decades, public and scientific interest in the role of EU policies for regional disparities has risen continuously. Recent empirical studies on the impacts of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) on economic cohesion have been strikingly diverse in their principal findings. Whereas some studies suggest positive overall effects on economic cohesion, others stress exactly the opposite. One major reason for the ambiguous results is that a single agreed-upon measure of economic cohesion is lacking. We propose a concept that distinguishes between two dimensions of policy impacts on economic cohesion: (i) the redistributive impact at a defined period of time and (ii) the change of the redistributive impact over time. The first dimension addresses the question whether a policy makes the distribution of a target variable, e.g., income, more equal or unequal at one point of time. The second dimension covers the impact of the policy on the disparity of the same variable over time, i.e., the impact on convergence. An empirical illustration of the concept for 13 NUTS 1 regions in Germany over the period 1991–2009 reveals that the two policy impacts of the CAP are partly contradictory for the two dimensions. It is shown that the CAP fosters economic cohesion by reducing regional disparities in each individual year. With regard to redistributive impacts over time, we find that CAP transfers leave income convergence largely unaffected for society as a whole. Within the agricultural sector, it leads to a convergence of receipts per farm whereas it induces a divergence of farm receipts per hectare.     

Competition Policy under Laissez-Faireism: Market Power and its Treatment in Hong Kong

The paper describes the current competition policy framework in Hong Kong: how it came into existence, what business practices are prohibited, and how the enforcement system works. Recent cases in the telecommunications industry are used to illustrate the sectoral approach, a unique feature of Hong Kong's competition policy. We argue that a sectoral approach faces two fundamental drawbacks. First, due to having different ``rules of the game' for different sectors, the allocation of resources may be distorted in the long run. Second, since the relevant regulatory agencies perform dual roles both as competition policy enforcer and as traditional regulator of natural monopolies, the impartiality of their competition decisions may not be credibly conveyed to the public. We also address other specific problems associated with the sectoral approach, such as the exclusion of structural issues, narrow coverage of sectors, and the lack of public enforcement. We conclude that an overall competition law can better promote competition and economic efficiency in Hong Kong.     

The Chinese steel industry in transition: industry perspective on innovation policy

There is little empirical research on how the Chinese Government should function in innovation management, particularly during its critical period of economic transition. This study explores and investigates the Chinese Government's innovation management structure, procedures and functions by interviewing government R&D management officials and industrial innovation managers and users. Questionnaires were distributed to industrial innovation practitioners and users of new steel products to solicit their perspectives on innovation policy issues. Findings indicate that current government innovation management procedures have received a tepid welcome from the industries. While there was general agreement that the government should maintain some involvement in industrial innovation, opinions regarding just how the government should intervene differed significantly between producers and users. Producers generally favoured more indirect government involvement. Policy implications are discussed.     

The moral hazard of Lax FCC land use oversight for advanced network infrastructure

This article discusses issues that arise when service providers place network equipment on publicly owned lands in the United States. Based on land use policy at the Federal Communications Commission, this paper theorizes that the use of public lands for 5G network development will create a moral hazard, as service providers may be tempted to take risks in the way they use public lands. Per economic theory the firm could behave recklessly when knowing that the costs will be borne by someone else – in this case local citizens. This is an example of the moral hazard problem in economics.     

Influence diagrams for complex strategic issues

Influence diagramming is a practical desk-top tool for mapping complex strategic issues so as to make the issues more comprehensible than otherwise. This article describes influence diagrams, explains how to use them, and relates how the tool was applied in a policy assessment study.     

"创造性毁灭"和网络经济条件下的自主科技创新

网络产业的自主技术创新对国民经济的整体发展具有重大影响.网络产业的技术创新呈现出与一般产业不同的特点.本文通过对网络经济条件下技术创新所面临的基本矛盾和基本问题的分析,指出网络经济下技术进步的主要特点以及技术创新过程中可能出现的主要市场失灵问题.本文特别分析了网络经济条件下技术选择中的超额动量和超额惯量问题,并结合从2G向3G移动通信的过渡问题,提出相应的政策选择.     

Leadership with 5G in Europe: Two contrasting images of the future,with policy and regulatory implications

European policy makers have shown a keen interest in the success of 5G because ubiquitous and high capacity electronic communication infrastructure is recognized as a cornerstone of economic development and productivity growth. The second generation, GSM, is considered the leading example, reaching its peak of deployment in 2015 with 3.83 billion subscribers served by over 700 operators in 219 countries and territories.With 5G rapidly shaping up in the R&D and standardization environments, and a call for leadership with 5G in Europe by policy makers, it is timely to investigate what lessons can be learned from the success of 2G that can be applied to 5G. More broadly, this calls for research into the commonalities and differences between successive generations of mobile technology, their introduction and the market adoption that followed. This also calls for an investigation into the possibility of multiple futures of 5G and how that impacts the opportunity for leadership. As one future may be more desirable than the other, depending on the perspective of the actor involved, a policy debate will be required to determine the most desirable future. As well as a discussion of the policy and regulatory actions required to enable a particular future.Hence, the two-part research question being addressed in this paper is: What explains the success of 2G-GSM and how can it be applied to create success with 5G in the European Union?To respond to the research question this paper first identifies the leadership lessons to be drawn from the success of 2G-GSM in relation to its successors 3G and 4G. Secondly, the contribution describes two stylized images of possible futures of 5G, called “Evolution” and “Revolution”, as input to the policy debate on the options for leadership with 5G. These images reflect two extremes in terms of possible futures of 5G. “Evolution” follows the pattern of previous generations and current trends. “Revolution” represents a clear break with these trends and a path towards leadership with 5G, as it exploits the opportunities of standardized APIs for service creation, being enabled by network virtualization as an architectural foundation of 5G. These open and uniformly applied APIs allow the market entry of a multitude of virtual mobile network operators (VMNOs) serving particular industry verticals or economic sectors with tailored feature sets and qualities of services. They allow a market momentum to be built that constitutes leadership with 5G in Europe.