WINDOW ON EASTERN EUROPE: Ethical Perceptions of Polish Business Students

An experienced educationalist comments on the views of top Polish business students on ethics in public life, government and business in modern Poland. The author is Wicklander Professor of Professional Ethics at DePaul University, Chicago, and also served recently as Visiting Fulbright Professor at the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan, Poland. He is currently President of the Society of Business Ethics in the USA.     

An appreciation of our referees

Editorial

An appreciation of our referees     

Unlocking the potential of advanced manufacturing technologies

This research examines whether investments in advanced manufacturing technologies (AMTs) such as flexible manufacturing systems (FMS), computer aided design (CAD), computer aided manufacturing (CAM), robotics, etc., are more likely to lead to improved performance if they are supported by improvements in the manufacturing infrastructure of the company. This question is evaluated using data gathered from 202 manufacturing plants chosen from industries generally considered to have relatively high investments in technology.Multiple item scales are developed and adapted from sources in the literature to measure investments in technology, infrastructure, and the performance of the plant. Evidence supporting the reliability and validity of these scales is provided. Hierarchical regression is used to analyze the relationship between technology, infrastructure, and performance. The results suggest that there is an important interaction between the adoption of advanced manufacturing technologies and investments in infrastructure. Firms that invest in both AMTs and infrastructure perform better than firms which only invest in one or the other. Separate analyses on sub-samples of firms with the highest and lowest investments in AMTs show that infrastructural investments have a stronger relationship with performance in the high investment group. Thus, the data indicate that infrastructural investments provide a key to unlocking the potential of advanced manufacturing technologies.     

The Tax Man Cometh: Constitutional Principles for Tax Enforcement

Passage of an Internal Revenue Service (IRS) overhaul bill in 1998 reflects the depth of American taxpayer frustration with the agency. We bring a constitutional, or rules of the game, perspective to tax enforcement. We examine political costs and benefits and agency discretion as reasons why tax enforcement by the government might deviate from the preferences of a representative citizen. We also examine prospects for reform. Lasting reform must alter the rules for deciding tax enforcement policy or the political pressures which yield excessive enforcement today will reemerge in the future.     

A Note on Regulating Oligopolistic Industries: A Hierarchical Model

In a 1994 paper, extending the well-known incremental surplus subsidy scheme of Sappington and Sibley, Schwermer presented a non-Bayesian incentive scheme for regulating a Cournot oligopoly industry. This note designs an oligopolistic incentive scheme for a hierarchical Stackelberg model in which firms choose outputs sequentially.     

A duration analysis of privatization in the telecom sector

The paper attempts to identify the telecom-sector performance indicators, relevant economic variables, and institutional characteristics of a country that effect the process of privatization of state-owned telecom enterprises. Using standard duration analysis of a panel data, we demonstrate that the privatization incentives are not only shaped by the mobility of financial capital in a country but are also influenced by the degree of competitiveness of private sector participation in policy-making process. The empirical results also reveal the significant impact of productive efficiency in telecom service provision on its course to privatization. We thank an anonymous referee for helpful comments and suggestions. We are solely responsible for all mistakes.     

Medical insurance with rank-dependent utility

Summary. A well-known result in the medical insurance literature is that zero co-insurance is never second-best for insurance contracts subject to moral hazard. We replace the usual expected utility assumption with a version of the rank-dependent utility (RDU) model that has greater experimental support. When consumers exhibit such preferences, we show that zero co-insurance may in fact be optimal, especially for low-risk consumers. Indeed, it is even possible that the first-best and second-best contracts are identical. In this case, there is no “market failure”, despite the informational asymmetry. We argue that these RDU results are in better accord with the empirical evidence from US health insurance markets. Received: February 26, 2001; revised version: October 4, 2002 RID="*" ID="*"The authors would particularly like to thank Simon Grant, John Quiggin, Peter Wakker and an anonymous referee for valuable comments and suggestions on earlier drafts. The paper has also benefitted from the input of seminar audiences at The Australian National University, University of Auckland, University of Melbourne and University of Sydney. Ryan also gratefully acknowledges the financial support of the ARC, through Grant number A000000055. Correspondence to:R. Vaithianathan