Economic performance and “frontier” efficiency: A product life-cycle approach

We propose to introduce some economic performance variables of the firms and relate these with the corresponding frontier efficiency measures of 13 industries of the Belgian manufacturing sector in 1978. In order to find groups of similar firms by applying a cluster technique, we assume that this relationship is of a product life cycle nature.In the light of the product life cycle scheme itself and variations of it we can consider the possible explanatory variables of technical inefficiency in each group of firms as sources which intensify or slow-down the economic performance of the firm under consideration. Some cautious characterization of the top and bottom level clusters is formulated and linked to the efficiency issue.This paper was processed by N. R. Adam     

Nonlinearities and heterogeneity in environmental quality: An empirical analysis of deforestation

We use a panel data set of 59 developing countries over the 1972–1994 period to study the deforestation process. Relying on both parametric and semiparametric models, we examine nonlinearities and heterogeneity in the deforestation process. We first study the existence of an Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) and then analyze determinants of deforestation. Our data sample provides no evidence of an EKC. We also find that political institution failures may worsen the deforestation process in developing countries.     

The Prosecution of Public Figures and the Separation of Powers. Confusion within the Executive Branch – A Conceptual Framework

Criminal investigation and prosecution of politicians, top civil servants and other public figures are topics frequently discussed in the media. The nature of the investigating or prosecuting authority varies between countries – from the general public prosecutor, through magistrates to independent counsels or parliamentary investigation commissions. This paper analyzes the role and status of public prosecutors within the separation of powers-concept. Prosecutors are usually part of the executive and not the judicial branch, which implies that they do not enjoy the same degree of independence as judges, and are ultimately subordinated to the directives of the minister of justice or the government. Conflicts of interest may hence arise if members of government can use the criminal process for their own or partisan interests. The incentives of public prosecutors in different jurisdictions are compared.     

Does the dutch model really exist?

The policy that led from the "Dutch disease" (in the 1980s) to the "Dutch miracle" (in the 1990s) consists of three tracks: wage moderation, retrenching public expenditure and reducing the tax burden, and slimming the welfare system. The wage moderation track seems to have been the most important. The term "Dutch model" refers to the socioeconomic system of the Netherlands. Most observers point particularly to the relatively low unemployment rate to indicate the success of this model. However, the economic inactivity rate in the Netherlands is not lower than in neighboring countries. This suggests that open unemployment in the Netherlands has been partly replaced with hidden unemployment. In particular, the disability scheme seems to contain a large component of hidden unemployment. Another feature of the Dutch model is its consensus-seeking nature, which is fostered by its institutional structure.     

An efficient budget allocation policy for decentralisation of responsibility for site decontamination projects

Selection and execution of site decontamination projects is often best left to local authorities, in accordance with the subsidiarity principle, even though the budget for such projects is made available through a central authority. In this paper we suggest a practical budget allocation policy which a central authority can employ to allocate budgets to local authorities, while still optimising the central authority's environmental objective function. The procedure is fully consistent with the principle of decentralisation of responsibility for selection and execution of projects, and requires a minimum information exchange between local and central levels. Despite the information asymmetry between local and central levels, incentive compatibility problems can be (partially) prevented by choosing an appropriate evaluation mechanism. At the same time, the procedure is computationally effective and efficient, and can guarantee a fair budget allocation, making it easy to implement and politically acceptable.     

Nonresponse Bias and Stimulus Effects in the Dutch National Election Study

Bias is a much-debated issue in survey research. Answer effects (respondents claim to have behaved differently than they did in reality), nonresponse bias (nonrespondents differ on important variables from the respondents) and stimulus effects (by participating in a previous wave of a study, respondents change their behavior or attitude) can seriously distort the results of survey research. By using data from the 1998 Dutch National Election Study the authors show that the results of election research can indeed be affected by bias. Not only are significant effects found in the distribution of political attitude and voting behavior variables as a result of both nonresponse bias and stimulus effects, it is also shown that relations between variables change as a result of bias.     

Does seeing more deeply into a game increase one’s chances of winning?

The substantively rational value of the games studied in this paper does not help predict subject performance in the experiment at all. An accurate model must account for the cognitive ability of the people playing the game. This paper investigates whether the variation in measured rationality bounds is correlated with the probability of winning when playing against another person in games that exceed both players’ estimated rationality bound. Does seeing deeper into a game matter when neither player can see to the end of the game? Subjects with higher measured bounds win 63 percent of the time and the larger the difference the more frequently they win.     

Existence of a competitive equilibrium in a one sector growth model with heterogeneous agents and irreversible investment

Summary. We prove existence of a competitive equilibrium in a version of a Ramsey (one sector) model in which agents are heterogeneous and gross investment is constrained to be non negative. We do so by converting the infinite-dimensional fixed point problem stated in terms of prices and commodities into a finite-dimensional Negishi problem involving individual weights in a social value function. This method allows us to obtain detailed results concerning the properties of competitive equilibria. Because of the simplicity of the techniques utilized our approach is amenable to be adapted by practitioners in analogous problems often studied in macroeconomics. Received: September 13, 2001; revised version: December 9, 2002 RID="*" ID="*" We are grateful to Tapan Mitra for pointing out errors as well as making very valuable suggestions. Thanks are due to Raouf Boucekkine and Jorge Duran for additional helpful discussions. We also thank an anonymous referee for his/her helpful comments. The second author acknowledges the financial support of the Belgian Ministry of Scientific Research (Grant ARC 99/04-235 “Growth and incentive design”) and of the Belgian Federal Goverment (Grant PAI P5/10, “Equilibrium theory and optimization for public policy and industry regulation”). Correspondence to: C. Le Van