Hypothèses de salariés non membres et financement externe pour les firmes autogérées

Among the various questions raised by theoretical studies on self-managed firms, the author considers two key issues dealing with job rigidity in these enterprises and with their ability to get external financing: should the employment of non-member workers in these firms be encouraged or not? Should the external financing of these firms be deregulated or not? These two questions are related to an important part of the literature on self-managed firms which is dedicated to their so-called perverse behaviours and to the stability of this type of production organization. The theoretical models help to understand the difficulties experienced by this type of organization and to see how and why the constraints on employment of non-member workers and on the external financing possibilities can have positive effects on self-managed firms. Among these results, those coming from the analysis of the choice of structures and production techniques help to understand the development of self-managed firms in industries which require high level production techniques and high human skills.     

Globalization, Lobbying, and International Environmental Governance

Globalization may require supranational coordination of environmental policies to prevent strategic policy competition weakening environmental standards. This raises concerns about a democratic deficit at the supranational level, and the possibility of capture by special interest groups. The authors develop a model in which environmental policy can be set at the national or supranational level. Governments at each level act in the interests of the group they represent, and interest groups lobby to influence the probability of getting their type of government elected. Using asymmetries in lobbying costs, the authors analyze the effects of a democratic deficit and differential access to influence by different interest groups on the welfare of groups and nations. The paper shows: (i) asymmetries may have unexpected effects; (ii) asymmetries have greater effect when policy is set at the national rather than supranational level; and (iii) despite asymmetries groups and nations are better off when policy is coordinated at the supranational level.     

The Rate of Change in Evolutionary Systems and Evolutionary Economic Modeling

Evolutionary economics seeks to model socio-economic reality as an evolutionary system. This powerful approach entails the implication of the continuous loss of information through the evolutionary process. The implication corresponds to evolutionary biology, although the systems in evolutionary economics are different from those in evolutionary biology. The issue of the loss of information has not been extensively studied in economics. Many open questions remain: Which knowledge is lost under what circumstances? Can loss of information be harmful to the socio-economic system as a whole in the presence of runaway dynamics caused by, for example, network externalities? How can the development of knowledge in economic systems be studied? The present article examines these questions and more.     

Futures Contracts in Water Leasing: An Experimental Analysis Using Basin Characteristics of the Rio Grande,NM

Providing for increased water demands during periods of persistent drought and climatic variability may require water managers, users and planners to think differently about how water resources are allocated. A water marketing institution that allows water rights holders to reallocate water on a temporary basis could overcome these challenges with minimal conflict. In this paper, a water marketing institution that allows for the temporary reallocation of water rights in a spot and futures market is investigated. The results provide insight into three key questions: (1) how does trading impact the physical system, (2) does the value of water differ by trading agents, (3) how is economic welfare redistributed as a result of trading? Results of experimental treatments display minor impacts to the physical system, that prices differ across the different type of trading agents and the addition of a futures market has the ability to decrease market prices while increasing economic welfare as a futures market allows users to hedge against future water uncertainty.     

混合所有制公司中的国有股权——论国有股减持的理论基础

本文通过回答以下问题来建立国有股减持的理论基础 :国有股权在混合所有制公司中的作用是什么 ,以及国有股权比重应该如何调整。以截止 1 998年底的中国上市公司为样本 ,我们首次考虑了股权结构内生性可能 ,以及公司上市时 ,政府在决定国有股权比重过程中面临的逆向选择问题 ,即在上市前业绩较差的公司 ,由于其较差的初始业绩导致较低的可流通股发行额度 ,政府不得不保留更多的国有股 ,从而表现为上市前业绩越差 ,上市时国有股权比重越高的反向关系。给定中国上市公司面临的独特制度环境 ,我们有以下发现 :( 1 )公司上市后 ,国有股股东有助于改善公司业绩 ;( 2 )公司上市时 ,政府在决定国有股权比重过程中确实存在着逆向选择问题 ;( 3 )公司上市后 ,国有股权比重内生决定于公司利润最大化过程 ,上市后的业绩越差 ,国有股比例越低。分析结果的政策含义在于 :政府减持国有股不能“一刀切” ,而应以公司业绩为依据 ,首先在上市后业绩较差的公司进行减持。     

The new organizational structure and its virtual functioning

"Virtuality" is initiating a change in organizations. It is necessary for companies to be managed flexibly and to respond to the changing needs of the environment. Some new concepts of understanding the organization, accompanied by current technological developments, may offer some opportunities and solutions to the various strategies. How does this new concept of organization with no presence, no physical attendance, and no material factors affect existing companies? This paper deals with questions such as: What is virtuality for companies? How does one manage a virtual company? What elements of virtuality need to be considered by traditional companies entering the new millennium? These questions will be reflected upon and analyzed from a theoretical framework. The framework will provide the basis for the design of an empirical study. The results of the study contribute to and give feedback on these initial questions.     

Markets and Regulation: On the Contrast Between Free-Market Liberalism and Constitutional Liberalism

A liberalism that does not close its eyes to the constitutional level of choice must seek to extend the same fundamental logic that it applies in its theory of the market to the questions of what the sovereignty of the individual can mean, and how it can be secured, in constitutional matters. The problems that arise with such an extension to the constitutional level may well be more difficult than those that the liberal theory of the market has to deal with, and the conclusions that a constitutional liberalism arrives at may be less determinate that what the free-market approach pronounces. Yet, if these difficulties are inherent in the subject matter, and if the indeterminacy follows from arguments that we are required to accept, then denying them does not seem to be a promising strategy for strengthening the liberal paradigm.     

生育和经济社会的协调发展

有三个相关的生育问题需要作些深入研究,第一个是究竟我国当前生育是在什么水平?第二个是假如总和生育率的水平是1.8,这个水平能在今后三十年保持不变吗?第三个是假如未来三十年总和生育率过高或过低于1.8是不是会不利于人口与经济社会的协调发展?第一个问题应该可以用现有的但没有发表的生育数据作更深入分析和举办一次追踪调查去了解妇女生育的历史,追踪同样样本妇女的妊娠结果(活产、死产、流产)和出生儿童的性别。第二个问题的答案是否定的,因为世界上还没有一个国家能够不鼓励生育而能保持正在下降的出生水平。我国社会具备了生育水平继续下降的一切条件,特别是小家庭社会制度的普及更在促进生育水平下降。第三个问题用人口预测的方法比较未来不同生育水平对人口发展的影响,显示出不同预测的人口总数和年龄结构相差不大,无法得出过高和过低于1.8生育水平的未来人口会不利于人口与经济社会的协调发展的结论。     

Reflections on EU Geopolitics: Consolidation,Neighbourhood and Civil Society in the Reordering of European Space

Civil society observations of the EU's geopolitical impacts on its immediate neighbourhood provide a nuanced ‘ground-up’ perspective that eschews historically deterministic interpretations of the EU's role in the world. While this article is limited to Eastern Europe, it nevertheless highlights some of the challenges facing the EU's visions of ‘Neighbourhood’ as multilateral and multilayered regional co-operation. After a brief theoretical introduction, the article first characterizes the EU's geopolitics as a dual project of consolidation and ideational projection; that is as two projects of re-ordering – re-territorializing – interstate relationships. It then addresses three specific and interrelated questions with regard to civil society: 1) how do the EU and its policies affect civil society co-operation agendas and practises, 2) to what extent does civil society participate in the co-development of Neighbourhood Policy and 3) how do civil society actors perceive the role of the EU in promoting cross-border and regional co-operation within the ‘Neighbourhood’? One central issue in developing these questions is that of establishing ‘common’ European values as a condition for successful co-operation. Civil society actors must simultaneously operate within different, often competing, socio-political contexts. A balance between situational ethics and more generally accepted notions of (European) values is thus essential.     

Enforcement and environmental quality in a decentralized emission trading system

Should the powers of monitoring compliance and allocating tradeable emissions allowances be appointed to a unique supranational regulator or decentralized to several local regulators? To answer this question, we develop a two stage-two country game where environmental regulators set the amount of emission allowances and the level of monitoring effort to achieve full compliance while the regulated firms choose actual emissions and the number of permits to be held. Various, possibly conflicting, spillovers between countries arise in a decentralized setting. We show that decentralization is socially harmful if no asymmetry among institutional settings is introduced and can be suboptimal even when decentralization features lower monitoring costs than a centralized setting. Lower monitoring costs are therefore necessary, but not sufficient, to justify decentralization. Also, our analysis reveals that welfare can be higher under decentralization even if the corresponding environmental quality is worse than under centralization. Indeed, better environmental quality is sufficient but not necessary for higher welfare under decentralization. Finally, we discuss how these results can provide a theoretical rationale for the recent evolution of the EU ETS design.     

EU Eligibility,Central Europe,and the Invention of Applicant State Narrative

This article is about changing regional understandings in Europe and how those changed understandings reflect and shape contemporary geopolitical arrangements in the context of the eastward enlargement of the EU. It is argued in the article that two interrelated questions form the basis of the identity assumption of the eastern enlargement of the Union. First, where Europe's eastern boundary lies, and, second, how the eastern boundary is connected to the region-building, identity formation and moral language within the EU both at national and supranational scales. Special emphasis is given to a national moral language rather than to a supranational one, since, as argued in the article, national and European identities do not need to be mutually exclusive phenomena, but can bolster each other. The boundary between the EU and the 'East' is formed particularly through the national identity politics of the post-communist states applying for membership, and boundary drawing is a result of the 'European criteria' set down by the EU as well as the communist experience of the applicant states. It became a spatial strategy for the post-communist applicant states to locate themselves in historical and geographical Central Europe - the imagined moral heart of Europe - by separating themselves from the signifier 'East' in order to gain recognition as European in the early 1990s. This new narrative is argued to be particularly important for the post-Cold War national identity projects of the applicant states.     

Measuring legal systems

Factor-analytic models can substantially improve the measurement of comparative legal systems and thereby our understanding of how legal systems influence economic outcomes. These methods yield better estimates of latent constructs, allow us to evaluate whether institutional features are representative of a theoretical construct and whether allegedly distinct theoretical constructs can be separated empirically. We illustrate these points through a re-analysis of a 2003 study by Djankov, La Porta, Lopez-de-Silanes and Shleifer, using a factor-analytic method that combines continuous and categorical indicators. Our results strengthen these authors' findings with respect to how legal formalism relates to legal origin and the quality of the legal system. Yet, the results also show that many of the original index items are not significantly positively related to formalism. The results thus shed light on what institutional features should be prioritized for reform if we seek to make legal systems less formalistic. Moreover, we question the evidence that the formalism model better predicts the quality of the legal system than does the alternative “incentives” model. We argue, instead, that formalism and incentives may both relate to the tendency of a legal system to use bureaucratic rule-making. Our approach can readily be applied to the analysis of legal concepts other than formalism. Journal of Comparative Economics 35 (4) (2007) 711–728.     

Accounting for Ecosystems

Millennium Ecosystem Assessment documented the importance of ecosystem services. It is therefore important to include these services in the national system of economic accounts. This requires estimation of “accounting prices” for ecosystems, that is, the marginal value of a change in the size of the system. This raises a number of questions: What do we mean by the “size” of the system? What is the dynamics of the system? How do we quantify the impacts on services from a change in the size of the system and finally how do we value these impacts? We discuss these questions in a few examples of ecosystems, and valuation as such is not the major problem. The major problem is the lack of information of the appropriate dynamic model for most systems. We therefore suggest that economists and ecologists should set priorities on which ecosystems should be the first objects for study for these; we should test the possibilities of estimating the accounting prices.     

Public reaction to stock market volatility: evidence from the ATUS

How does the public react to changes in the stock market? We know from the existing body of research that sentiment can predict future stock-market movements. However, do market movements affect sentiment? This article addresses these questions by testing whether market movements precede changes in the emotional well-being of the general public. Using Granger causality analysis, we compare how market movements affect public well-being during periods of increased (2010) and decreased (2012) volatility. The results show that 30-day-lagged returns are associated positively and significantly with the public’s emotional well-being, and that this effect is stronger during periods of increased volatility. The results also show that this effect may persist for up to 120 days.     

National innovation systems and international knowledge flows: an exploratory investigation with the case of the Netherlands

Since the late 1980s, the literature on innovation systems has flourished, often tying these systems to nation-states. Technology, however, often flows across the borders of nations. In this paper, four cases are studied where foreign technology is imported and appropriated from abroad into Dutch companies. By doing so, the questions what a national system of innovation consists of and what such a system means for firms are explored. The cases studied provide a picture of international-sectoral systems, adding up to a loosely interacting innovation system at the national level.     

THE ROLE OF LABOR AND MARRIAGE MARKETS,PREFERENCE HETEROGENEITY,AND THE WELFARE SYSTEM IN THE LIFE CYCLE DECISIONS OF BLACK,HISPANIC, AND WHITE WOMEN*

Using data from the NLSY79, we structurally estimate a dynamic model of the life cycle decisions of young women. The women make sequential joint decisions about school attendance, work, marriage, fertility, and welfare participation. We use the model to perform counterfactual simulations designed to shed light on three questions: (1) How much of observed minority–majority differences in behavior can be attributed to differences in labor market opportunities, marriage market opportunities, and preference heterogeneity? (2) How does the welfare system interact with these factors to augment those differences? (3) How can new cohorts that grow up under the new welfare system (Temporary Aid for Needy Families) be expected to behave compared to older cohorts?     

Knowledge search,spillover and creation capability in India's pharmaceutical industry

This paper examines the relationship between knowledge creation capability and both knowledge search as well as knowledge spillover effects. It investigates three research questions: (1) How does knowledge search of a firm affect the firm's knowledge creation capability? (2) How do knowledge spillovers impact the firm's knowledge creation capability and (3) Which effect – knowledge search or knowledge spillover – is greater on the firm's knowledge creation capability? To discuss these questions, it draws data from the pharmaceutical industry in India. Based on patent and citation data from the US Patents and Trademark Office, from 1979 to 2009, empirical results demonstrate that knowledge search and knowledge spillover do have positive effects on knowledge creation capability with the former having greater effects than the latter. It concludes with a discussion of the theoretical and practical implications of this study and suggestions for future works.     

Information sharing about a demand shock

This paper examines two questions in asymmetric Cournot and Bertrand oligopoly with a demand shock. Under which conditions is information sharing a subgame-perfect equilibrium? What is the welfare effect when firms are better off? Given these questions, the normal assumptions in the earlier literature can be relaxed in three ways: demand functions can be asymmetric; a demand shock can affect firms differently; distributions of the demand shock and information signals can be arbitrary. Under these general assumptions, the answer to the first question is: every firm's response to the demand shock is stronger when all firms have perfect information than when one firm does so alone; the answer to the second question is: social welfare increases in Cournot competition, and consumer surplus decreases in Bertrand competition.     

Product standards, innovation and regulation

This paper examines the public policy, issues associated with product standardization. It addresses three main questions: (1) Do laissez faire markets provide an appropriate level ofcompatibility and standardization? (2) Does standardization result in anti-competitive behaviour? (3) Does standardization promote or retard innovation? The theoretical debate surrounding each of these issues is briefly reviewed. The process of setting standards with respects to high definition telivision technology is examined and used to illustrate the problems facing regulators. The paper concludes that, in the case of high definition television, the US market-based approach to standard setting has been more successful than has the more directly interventionist approaches adopted in Europe and Japan.     

Trends in co-authorship in economics since 1985

It has been often noted (McDowell and Melvin, 1983; Barnett et al., 1988; Piette and Ross, 1992; Sutter and Kocher, 2004) that the share of co-authored papers in economics has been increasing steadily. The purpose of this study is to investigate some of the theories as to why co-authorship has been increasing in the economics profession. Using data on the publication records of faculty at 129 US colleges and universities that offer doctoral degrees in Economics, Poisson and logit regression models are estimated to explain co-authorship. Results indicate that the likelihood of co-authorship is greater for papers that combine quantitative analysis with another field and for papers published in higher quality journals. Further, co-authorship appears to differ in the many subfields of economics, with the field of Economic History and History of Thought (Journal of Economic Literature (JEL) categories N and B) to be the least likely to co-author and the fields of Financial Economics (JEL category G) and Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics (JEL category Q) to be the most prone to co-authorship.