Understanding the value of project management: First steps on an international investigation in search of value

Organizations investing in project management need to be assured of a concrete return. Without the ability to clearly define its value, project management joins the long line of initiatives (i.e., TQM, information systems, training, human resources) struggling to prove their worth to organizations. However, demonstrating a concrete value in organizations has been illusive and even paradoxical. This paper describes the conceptual model underlying a major international research project designed to yield a broad perspective on the value of project management. This model and research design will be of interest to researchers, project managers, professional organizations, and senior executives.     

When haste makes sense: Cracking down on street markets for illicit drugs

This paper presents an analytical approach to the tactical question: ‘What level of enforcement over time allows one to eliminate a street market for illicit drugs while expanding the least possible total effort?’ The analysis is done in the context of Caulkins' model [6] which predicts the rate of change of dealers as a function of enforcement level and several market parameters. Our analysis suggests that the simple strategy of using the maximum available enforcement intensity until the market has been eliminated minimizes the total enforcement effort required.     

The Future European Labor Supply: The Critical Role of the Family

The European employment strategy initiated in 1997 is critically dependent upon the further integration of women into the labor market. The European Union has set a specific target employment rate for women of 60 percent by 2010 and is also committed to providing more and better child care facilities. This gender focus is reinforced by the requirement for gender mainstreaming in all aspects of European employment policy. There is an implied Europe-wide, universal policy of encouraging female labor-market participation and reducing the care work performed by domestic labor. However, the European Commission continues to have limited competence in areas of family, social, and welfare policy. As a result, these common employment objectives for women are thus being pursued against a background of quite different systems of social, family, welfare, and indeed labor-market organization. These systems have different economic and employment implications, such that the outcomes of the common European employment strategy will also be highly variable.     

Strategic alignment and organizational options in biotechnology firms

Biotechnology has created a number of oflfiortunities for new start-up firms. A feu of these fims have grown rapidly and have ambitious strategies. These strategies reflect the fim growing organizational competences i n the context of rapidly changing technological, competitive, Jinanczal and regulatory circumstances. The firms have pursued adaptive, learning-based strategies which give them advantages over large firms. Underpinning these strategies have been long-term efforts to establish a highly motivated and creative workforce. Using the examples fo the UK's two leading biotechnology firms, some of the features of these strategies are exumined. It is found that there are dgerences i n the organizational forms selected by the two fims. These reflect temporal factors, differing environmental conditioru, and elements of manugement choice. The difficulty oj strategic management in turbulent conditions 6s highlighted by considering some of the strengths and weaknesses of both options.     

Learning Objectives and Testing: An Analysis of Six Principles of Economics Textbooks,Using Bloom's Taxonomy

This study applies Bloom's Taxonomy of Educational Objectives to six principles of economics textboks and the accompanying instructor's manuals to determine whether the test banks provided are likely to measure the textbooks' stated objectives. The study finds significant discrepancies between the stated objectives of most textbooks and the instruments included in the instructor's manuals to measure student achievement.     

Textbook Treatments of the Financial Market in the IS-LM Model

Intermediate macroeconomics textbooks introduce financial markets into the IS-LM analysis but typically as a beginning-of-period consideration. Here the financial market is introduced in an end-of-period model.     

A Kantian critique of neoclassical law and economics

Abstract

This paper outlines a critique of neoclassical law and economics based on the ethics of Immanuel Kant, focusing on four central topics: efficiency as the sole evaluative criterion for policy-making, hypothetical compensation in Kaldor–Hicks efficiency, the instrumental nature of rights and the assumption of reciprocal causation, and the role of punishment to both society and the individual. This overview addresses issues of concern not just to Kantians, but to anyone dissatisfied with the utilitarian foundations of law and economics and the amoral view of law upon which it is based.     

The Point of Effective Demand

Abstract

Keynes's principle of effective demand conceives competitive equilibrium in terms of the choices of entrepreneurs, investors and consumers, rather than of the optimal allocation of factors of production. In The General Theory, effective demand is distinguished from aggregate demand and from income, expected or realised, and there is no suggestion that equilibrium means the convergence of expectations. Reconsideration of Keynes's use of time and equilibrium periods leads to the conclusion that he treats employment as in continuous equilibrium, at the point of effective demand, determined by the state of expectation, the correctness of which is strictly irrelevant. The nature of the equilibrium represented by the point of effective demand is here described, not in terms of the multiplier, but in terms of the continuous equilibrium of supply and demand in short-term forward markets. This reading is faithful to Keynes's conception of aggregate demand as dependent upon the expectations of entrepreneurs, and it resolves the meaning of his ‘long-period employment.’ Formal appendices identify the differences between Keynes and Walras and the nature of the multiplier. The paper concludes that the Keynesian cross and ‘Swedish’ analysis should be abandoned, and the Walrasian conception recognised as only the limiting case of general competitive equilibrium in a monetary economy.     

A Post-Keynesian Model of the Palestinian Economy: The Economics of an Investment-Constrained Economy

The 60-year-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict has deeply influenced the evolution of the Palestinian economy. In the last two decades political instability and the Israeli closure policy have generated protracted economic stagnation and poor capital formation. The paper describes the consequences on the Palestinian economy of existing high transaction costs and market fragmentation. We propose a simple one-sector Post-Keynesian model that describes Palestine as a demand-driven economy. We show that high transaction costs and market fragmentation discourage investment by curtailing expected profitability, reducing the size of the market and depressing entrepreneurs' animal spirits. In the short run, these two factors induce low levels of capacity utilization and low rates of capital accumulation. The situation is even more worrying in the long run when entrepreneurs can revise their expectations. Depressed animal spirits and low levels of capacity use give rise to a low-growth trap from which Palestine can hardly escape. We also highlight the possible positive impact of the removal of high transaction costs and of market fragmentation, and the ensuing beneficial effects on the long-run equilibrium values of capital accumulation and capacity use. The conclusions place these analytical results into the historical situation of the Palestinian economy, and consider what is needed, politically and economically, in order to establish a sustained development process.

The division of labour is limited by the extent of the market. (Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations, Book I, chapter III)     

The Political Economy of State Government Subsidy Adoption: The Case of Ethanol

In this study, we examine the factors that determine the adoption of state economic development incentives in the ethanol industry. We compile data on the implementation dates for subsidies/tax credits for all states for the years 1984–2007, a period that covers the complete emergence of the biofuel industry in the United States and that was characterized by the passage of numerous state‐level subsidies and tax breaks aimed at increasing ethanol production. Using Cox proportional hazard regression analysis, we find that states are more likely to adopt ethanol subsidies when corn production is high, when corn prices are low and gasoline prices are high, when a state is affiliated with the National Corn Growers Association, when a check‐off is present, when a state has a high environmental score, and when state government is under the control of Democrats.