THE BUS INDUSTRY: FRANCHISE AND THE LOSS OF FREEDOM

Political pressure exists for the bus industry to be brought under local authority control by means of 'Quality Contracts.'These would take away from management the freedom for marketing, and especially for marketing by price, that was returned to them by the 'deregulation' of 1985. The proposed franchises would return the industry to the 'bad old days' and prevent its continued improvement through market forces from taking place. The Department of Transport considered the idea of franchises in 1985, but concluded that it would merely lead to monopoly power.     

Gender and Piece Rates, Commissions, and Bonuses

Previous work shows that establishments with higher proportions of women are more likely to use piece rates but that individual women are less likely to receive performance pay. We present a model in which lower expected tenure and labor force attachment are positively associated with piece rates but are negatively associated with other forms of performance pay. Analysis of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY) confirms that women are more likely to be paid piece rates and simultaneously less likely to be paid commissions and bonuses.     

Self‐help in housing and chengzhongcun in China's urbanization

This article focuses on the housing issues of rural migrants arising from urbanization, with particular reference to chengzhongcun, a topic with considerable impact on policymaking. An attempt is made to understand the underlying rationale of self‐help in housing and the important role of chengzhongcun in sheltering rural migrants in the context of China's rural‐urban dichotomy. As demonstrated in this study, chengzhongcun accommodate, with little in the way of government resources and assistance, millions of rural migrants because of their social accessibility and affordability. While not denying their social problems, we argue that chengzhongcun in fact act as an innovative and positive agent to promote urbanization in present day China by housing massive numbers of rural migrants and assimilating them into cities. Current government policies towards chengzhongcun have generated a wide range of interest conflicts and confrontations. The consequences of such conflicts show that the government policies were problematic and unworkable, as they violated basic market principles as well as citizen rights. Policy strategy towards the redevelopment of chengzhongcun must acknowledge their credibility in the Chinese road to urbanization and requires more thoughtful and prudent consideration of migrants' demands for affordable housing.     

Intertemporal Substitution and Terms-of-Trade Shocks

The paper examines the relationship between transitory terms‐of‐trade shocks and private saving. Using a model allowing for nonseparability between the consumption of tradables and nontradables, the paper estimates the intertemporal elasticity of substitution while accounting for the intratemporal elasticity of substitution between the consumption of tradables and nontradables. Empirical analysis of data for five industrial countries indicates that in response to transitory terms‐of‐trade shocks, intertemporal substitution of consumption and intratemporal substitution of consumption between tradables and nontradables both have large effects on private saving.     

TAX COMPETITION

In the modern world, capital enterprise and skilled labour are increasingly mobile, and naturally attracted to countries with low taxes. Indeed tax competition can be healthy, and far preferable to a 'tax collectors' cartel.' The right of the fiscally oppressed to move themselves and their capital elsewhere is a great defender of economic freedom.     

The distributional impact of unification and the 1992–93 recession on West German households

The 1992–93 recession in the western states of Germany has been attributed, in substantial measure, to the macroeconomic consequences of policies to finance unification. Studies of the costs of unification have not attempted to measure the burden of the recession. We estimate a dynamic, panel model of household incomes using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (GSOEP) and use it to forecast what these incomes would have been in 1992–94 without a recession. Using a ratio of actual to forecast incomes, we compare the relative burden of the recession across households. Our findings suggest that western households below the median income bore the brunt of the combined impact of unification and the recession of 1992–93.
JEL classification: P3, D3, E3.     

E-Business Transformation via Alliance Clusters

The number of firms using alliances as part of their corporate venturing or market entry strategies has surged over the past decade. Three common reasons cited for pursuing alliances are technology convergence, market access and alliance partners' complementary resources. This paper contrasts the alliance strategies of HP and IBM, two major competitors in electronic services (i.e. Internet-based 'e- service') businesses, using the Familiarity Matrix as a display tool to portray the strategies. Whereas the HP strategy is to attempt to establish its technology infrastructure as the standard e-services infrastructure on the Internet, IBM aims to position its IBM Global Services, rather than its technology, at the center of this ecosystem.     

Lord Aldington's Disservice to Wealth Creation

The habitual opposition to the growth of service industries from traditionalists and manufacturing interests is rehearsed in the Aldington Report on Overseas Trade John McEnery (right), former Under-Secretary at the Department of Trade and Industry, and author of IEA Research Monograph Manufacturing Two Nations, condemns outmoded patterns of thought and recalls on the Upper House to abandon its manufacturing myopia