On the governmental use of multi-criteria analysis

Public decision making, especially about our natural environment, is inherently exposed to a high conflict potential. The necessity to capture the complex context has led to an increasing request for decision analytic techniques as support for the decision process. Multi-criteria analysis (MCA) is deemed to overcome the shortcomings of traditional decision-support tools used in economics, such as cost-benefit (CBA) or cost-effectiveness analysis (CEA). This is due, among other, to its ability of dealing with qualitative criteria (e.g. sensitive ecological factors), as well as with uncertainties about current or future impacts. Unlike CBA or CEA, MCA is rarely required by national laws or directives. Nonetheless, a number of recent MCA applications were supported by public authorities who either initiated or directly participated in such analyses. Given the theoretical assumptions about MCA's potential to support complex decision problems, as is often the case for environmental or sustainability policies, the key concern in our paper is to evaluate whether this potential has already been recognised in public decision making. For limitation purposes, the present work focuses on real-life case studies reported during the last decade with an insight in the initiation, the actors involved and the importance of the MCA results in the decision process. We argue that the significance and role played by MCA so far reaches beyond its current legal requirements.     

Debreu’s social equilibrium theorem with asymmetric information and a continuum of agents

We provide several different generalizations of Debreu’s social equilibrium theorem by allowing for asymmetric information and a continuum of agents. The results not only extend the ones in Kim and Yannelis (J Econ Theory 77:330–353, 1977), Yannelis and Rustichini (Stud Econ Theory 2:23–48, 1991), but also new theorems are obtained which allow for a convexifying effect on aggregation (non-concavity assumption on the utility functions) and non-convex strategy sets (pure strategies). This is achieved by imposing the assumption of “many more agents than strategies” (Rustichini and Yannelis in Stud Econ Theory 1:249–265, 1991; Tourky and Yannelis in J Econ Theory 101:189–221, 2001; Podczeck in Econ Theory 22:699–725, 2003). To the memory of Gerard Debreu. A preliminary draft was presented in Paris, in April of 2005. I have benefited from the discussion, comments and questions of Erik Balder, Jean-Marc Bonnisseu, Bernard Cornet and Filipe Martins Da-Rocha and Conny Podczeck. A careful and knowledgeable referee made several useful comments and rescued me from a mishap.     

Property rights and information flows: a simulation approach

With the growth of the information economy, the proportion of knowledge-intensive goods to total goods is constantly increasing. Lessig (The future of ideas: the fate of the commons in a connected world. Vintage, New York 2001) has argued that IPRs have now become too favourable to existing producers and that their ‘winner-take-all’ characteristics are constraining the creators of tomorrow. In this paper we look at how variations in IPRs regimes might affect the creation and social cost of new knowledge in economic systems. Drawing on a conceptual framework, the Information Space or I-Space to explore how the uncontrollable diffusibility of knowledge relates to its degree of structure, we deploy an agent-based modelling approach to explore the issue of IPRs. We take the ability to control the diffusibility of knowledge as a proxy measure for an ability to establish property rights in such knowledge. Second, we take the rate of obsolescence of knowledge as a proxy measure for the degree of turbulence induced by different regimes of technical change. Then we simulate the quantity and cost to society of new knowledge under different property right regimes.

Policy Dimensions of Progressive Institutional Change: Lessons from China’s Construction of a Socialist Market Economy

Abstract:

Through a comprehensive review of the progressive institutional change (PIC) literature, I first discuss four possible trajectories of PIC by considering the forces of societal reaction that might frame the path, as well as the scale and scope of the changes. Thus, I pose four questions that need to be asked when related policies are formulated for PIC. To illustrate this method, I scrutinize the evidence from the construction of a socialist market economy by the Chinese government since the 1980s and argue that related policies have successfully promoted PIC from three dimensions: (1) curbing potential conflicts with power groups; (2) promoting a sense of awareness among stakeholders; and (3) minimizing disturbances to the community. Actually, the related changes demonstrate a dynamic “displacement process” for PICs. Despite the success of this sociosystem, it is found that the sustaining of PIC which requires policy factors that enhance instrumental efficiency in the Chinese context will serve as a challenge to the Chinese government ahead.     

Editorial

Editorial Introduction

Editorial