Political contestability and public contracting

Do public agents undertake socially inefficient activities to protect themselves? In politically contestable markets, part of the lack of flexibility in the design and implementation of the public procurement process reflects public agents' risk adaptations to limit the political hazards from opportunistic third parties—political opponents, competitors, and interest groups. Reduced flexibility limits the likelihood of opportunistic challenges, while externalizing the associated adaptation costs to the public at large. We study this matter and provide a comprehensive theoretical framework with empirically testable predictions.     

Relational Well-Being and Wealth: Māori Businesses and an Ethic of Care

Care is at the heart of the Māori values system, which calls for humans to be kaitiaki, caretakers of the mauri, the life-force, in each other and in nature. The relational Five Well-beings approach, based on four case studies of Māori businesses, demonstrates how business can create spiritual, cultural, social, environmental and economic well-being. A Well-beings approach entails praxis, which brings values and practice together with the purpose of consciously creating well-being and, in so doing, creates multi-dimensional wealth. Underlying the Well-beings approach is an ethic of care and an intrinsic stakeholder view of business.     

Analysis of an integrated maximum covering and patrol routing problem

In this paper, we address the problem of determining the patrol routes of state troopers for maximum coverage of highway spots with high frequencies of crashes (hot spots). We develop a specific mixed integer linear programming model for this problem under time feasibility and budget limitation. We solve this model using local and tabu-search based heuristics. Via extensive computational experiments using randomly generated data, we test the validity of our solution approaches. Furthermore, using real data from the state of Alabama, we provide recommendations for (i) critical levels of coverage; (ii) factors influencing the service measures; and (iii) dynamic changes in routes.     

The Effect of Incentive regulation on Infrastructure Modernization: Local Exchange Companies' Deployment of Digital Technology

This study examines the investment patterns of all large local exchange telephone companies in the United States over time. It identifies how different regulatoy environments have influenced the recent historical pattern of investment in modern infrastructure equipment. It focuses exclusively on the postdivestiture experience of local telephone exchange companies (LECs). It examines the growth of fiber-optic deployment and of complementary equipment associated with the modernization of today's information infrastructure. The study estimates the influence of different regulatory structures on infrastructure deployment by LECs. The study is unique in that if relates individual LEC investment patterns to LEC-specific regulatory, demographic, and economic characteristics. Thus, it isolates the contribution of state regulatory policies from that of other demographic and economic factors in the determination of infrastructure deployment at the state LEC rather than at the corporate level. Its main findings are as follows: First, price regulation (and, in particular, price caps) is a more potent regulatory mechanism than the standard earnings sharing scheme. Second, when associated with an earnings sharing scheme, price regulation is less effective in triggering infrastructure deployment than when it is implemented by itself. These results raise questions about the effectiveness of a popular regulatory instrument-earnings sharing schemes-and highlight the effectiveness of generic price-cap regulation. These results have implications for the design of regulatory policy at both the state and federal levels. In particular, given the importance currently being placed on the development of the information superhighway, regulatory emphasis should be focused more on price regulation than on regulating profits.     

An informational perspective on administrative procedures

A number of scholars have identified the important role administrativeprocedures have in 'structuring' the interest group environmentof government agencies: determining who can participate andin what manner. Using a formal model, we analyze the incentivesand outcomes that different procedural - and therefore interestgroup - environments generate. The model yields a number ofimportant conclusions. First, because elected officials areconcerned not only about distributional rents, but also informationalones, the use of procedures in some cases will result in worseoutcomes for political principals on the policy dimension. Officialswill be willing to bear the losses in exchange for informationalgains. Second, under certain conditions, a politician is betteroff with a biased group monitoring the agency rather than aneutral one, since biased groups will subsidize a portion ofthe monitoring cost. Third, having multiple interest groups,including one in opposition to the politician, makes the politicalprincipal strictly better off than any other constellation ofmonitors, since competing interest groups will provide the greatestinformation at the lowest cost to the elected official.     

Opinions about privacy: does the type of information used for marketing purposes make a difference?

The availability of personal information is at an all-time high. Technology has revolutionised the marketing industry, enabling marketers to achieve precise selectivity through database efforts. With this selectivity comes the responsibility of determining acceptable and unacceptable uses of personal information by businesses and nonprofits for marketing purposes. This paper explores opinions on information privacy by investigating the impact of education in the formulation of opinions on the use of personal information for marketing purposes. A single credit course in direct marketing does not change opinions regarding information privacy. But a series of credit marketing courses does reduce the level of restrictions desired on the availability and use of personal information for marketing. Thus, the direct marketing industry would be better served by promoting and demonstrating the ethical use of personal information through ethical marketing practices by all its practitioners rather than by attempting to educate the general public about the nature and uses of such information and data for marketing purposes. Copyright © 1999 Henry Stewart Publications     

Mature and Emerging Organic Markets: Modelling Consumer Attitude and Behaviour With Partial Least Square Approach

Although the organic food sector has been researched for around 20 years, still little is known about consumer behaviour when comparing developed and emerging organic markets. Therefore, the aim of this study is to investigate the determinants of organic food consumption in a mature (Germany) and an emerging (Chile) organic market using a model based on the theory of planned behaviour and partial least squares for parameters estimation. The reported results have implications for decision makers in both countries. The use of altruistic arguments in organic food marketing is a key aspect to increase organic food demand in both countries. However, egoistic motives might also gain importance in Chile, as they already have in Germany. In both countries, the barriers for organic food consumption have to be addressed with great attention—a lack of information and availability, especially in Chile, and scepticism about organic food in Germany.