ECONOMIC SANCTIONS REVISITED: ADDITIONAL INSIGHTS INTO WHY THEY FAIL

Economic sanctions have a poor track record in achieving their objectives. In most cases, they are ineffective in bringing about policy change, cause increased suffering in the sanctioned country and reduce opportunities for business. This paper provides additional insights into why sanctions fail by examining two overlooked factors: power–dependency theory and pressure for political stability.     

Estimating Market Power in the South African Banking Sector

Indicators of market power can be ambiguous because cost economies associated with scale and not market imperfections may influence results. This article illustrates that without direct measures of concentration, estimates of costs, scale economies and profitability can be used to identify market power in banking. Secondly, via this method, econometric estimates provide meaningful evidence of market power in the South African banking sector over the study sample period (1979–1998). A reasonable conclusion is that while industrial structure is important, careful consideration needs to be given to cost economies and profitability when assessing market power. In addition, there is a need to consider appropriate policy to reduce market power in banking in South Africa.     

The international labour movement and China

This article considers the relationship between Chinese and Western labour activists. It analyses this relationship in reference to ‘vertical’ and ‘horizontal’ divisions of global power, drawing on world‐systems and social movement unionism literature to illustrate this. It argues for a conceptual middle ground to develop useful engagement strategies.     

Who's in charge of the central city? The conflict between efficiency and equity in the design of a metropolitan area

A circular metropolitan area consists of a central city surrounded by a suburb. Households sort over the two jurisdictions based on public service levels and their costs of commuting to the metropolitan center. Using numerical simulations, we show that (1) there typically exist two equilibria: one in which the poor form the voting majority in the central city and the other in which the rich form the majority in the central city; (2) there is an efficiency vs. equity trade-off as to which equilibrium is preferred; and (3) if the central city contains only poor households, equity favors expanding the central city to include rich households. The third result arises not because of a fiscal subsidy from rich to poor households induced by a property tax but rather because of a change in house price capitalization.     

Fixed cost,marginal cost,and the decision to buy or make

The paper builds a formal model of the costs and benefits of producing intermediate goods internally as compared to buying partially produced inputs on the open market. The model centers on the link between the purchase of assets specific to a production process and the mean and variance of profits from the purchase. The central point of the paper is that even though purchases of assets specific to a production process can have an ambiguous impact on profits of the decision to make, the purchase of such assets has a tendency to reduce the variability of profits. This trade‐off is at the heart of decision to buy or make. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Union recognition in Britain's offshore oil and gas industry: implications of the Employment Relations Act 1999

The Employment Relations Act 1999 (ERA) has provided trade unions in the UK with new opportunities for achieving recognition. After a long history of anti‐unionism in the offshore oil and gas industry, employers have voluntarily ceded recognition to Trades Union Congress (TUC)‐affiliated trade unions. The legitimacy of this recognition process has been contested by the non‐TUC Offshore Industry Liaison Committee (OILC), an offshore workers’ union, seeking to act as a recognised bargaining agent. The ERA may be promoting ‘business friendly’ agreements at the expense of claims to recognition of other bargaining agents and of democratic employee choice.     

Power,Intergroup Conflicts and Social Stratification in the United States: What has the Global Crisis Taught us?

Abstract

Drawing on early sociological analyses of how power and intergroup conflicts can affect the development of modern economies, this paper investigates how the recent Global Crisis (GC) has affected the stratification of the US society. The paper argues that the consumerist society has reinforced the historical stratification of social identities with white men in high-paid, high-social status managerial and financial occupations at the top, and black women in low-paid, low-status service occupations at the bottom. This paper calls for a deconstruction of the neoliberal individual into a unique combination of identities in a stratified capitalist society in order to reveal how social stratification has evolved during the GC. The paper finally concludes on the importance of heterogeneous identities in reflecting the diversity of societal and economic interests in order to address the issues of financial stability and sustainability at the corporate and societal levels.     

A Model of Competing Jurisdictions with Locally Polluting Environments and Mobile Populations

In this model we consider a federation consisting oftwo geographically separated Regional states withlocal taxing authority. The residents of thefederation are identical in preferences and haveexplicit tolerance to pollution. Pollution is local innature and is a by-product of production implying amore highly populated region would generate morepollution. Local authorities in the regions can andwill (in the interest of local residents) engage ingame theoretical taxation strategies. The model isused to illustrate that Nash Equilibrium can resultwherein the two regions have different levels ofenvironmental quality. The resulting Nash conditionsimply for instance that residents of the ``cleanregion' will subsidize those in the other region tostay in the more polluted environment (in order foreach to accomplish their preferred consumption andenvironmental quality pair).