Intelligence‐led policing at the Amsterdam‐Amstelland Police Department: operationalized business intelligence with an enterprise ambition

This article elaborates on the setup for intelligence‐led policing in support of ensuring public safety as it presented itself in the Spring of 2007 at the Amsterdam‐Amstelland Police Department in the Netherlands. The picture that is painted is the outcome of a qualitative research effort involving semi‐structured interviews triangulated with other internal data sources. The main goal of the article is to establish how an organization can leverage its operationalized business intelligence ambition by connecting it into an ambition for better enterprise management. The case ends in showcasing two popular operational business intelligence tools instrumental to capacity management. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Corporate Governance in Asia: A Survey

Corporate governance has received much attention in recent years, partly due to the Asian financial crisis. We review the literature on corporate governance issues in Asia to develop region‐specific and general lessons. Much attention has been given to poor corporate sector performance, but most studies do not suggest that Asian firms were badly run. The literature does confirm the limited protection of minority rights in Asia, allowing controlling shareholders to expropriate minority shareholders. Agency problems have been exacerbated by low corporate transparency, associated with rent‐seeking and relationship‐based transactions, extensive group structures and diversification, and risky financial structures. The controlling shareholder bears some of agency costs in the form of share price discounts and expenditures on monitoring, bonding and reputation building. The Asian financial crisis further showed that conventional and alternative corporate governance mechanisms can have limited effectiveness in systems with weak institutions and poor property rights. Overall, the understanding of the determinants of firm organizational structures, corporate governance practices and outcomes remains limited, however.     

Participation and study decisions in a public system of higher education

We analyze the decision whether to participate and where and what to study in a public system of higher education, based on a unique dataset of all eligible high school pupils in an essentially closed region (Flanders). We find that pupils perceive the available institutions and programs as close substitutes relative to the outside option. This implies an ambiguous role for travel costs: they hardly affect the participation decision, but have a strong impact on the decision where and what to study. To illustrate how our empirical results can inform the debate on reforming public systems, we assess the effects of tuition fee increases. Uniform cost‐based tuition fee increases achieve most of the welfare gains; the additional gains from fee differentiation are relatively limited. These welfare gains are quite large under conservative assumptions on the social cost of public funds, and there is a substantial redistribution from students to outsiders. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

DOES STUDENT WORK REALLY AFFECT EDUCATIONAL OUTCOMES? A REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE

We review the theories put forward, methodological approaches used and empirical conclusions found in the multidisciplinary literature on the relationship between student employment and educational outcomes. A systematic comparison of the empirical work yields new insights that go beyond the overall reported negative effect of more intensive working schemes and that are of high academic and policy relevance. One such insight uncovered by our review is that student employment seems to have a more adverse effect on educational decisions (continuing studies and enrolment in tertiary education) than on educational performance (test and exam scores).     

Does organizational ownership matter? Objectives of employees in public,nonprofit and for-profit nursing homes

Does organizational ownership matter for employees? We conducted a discrete choice experiment to reveal employees’ objectives in for-profit, nonprofit and governmental nursing homes. The results indicate that differences in objectives among nursing home staff are at least partially related to differences in ownership type. More specifically, we find that employees of public nursing homes are less extrinsically motivated than their for-profit and nonprofit counterparts. However, the results also show that employees of for-profit, nonprofit and governmental nursing homes are trading off output quality and output quantity differently, in line with the view that public providers of elderly care are pursuing a supplier-of-last-resort objective function.     

Access to Financial Services: A Review of the Issues and Public Policy Objectives

This article reviews the evidence on the importance of financefor economic well-being. It provides data on the use of basicfinancial services by households and firms across a sample ofcountries, assesses the desirability of universal access, andprovides an overview of the macroeconomic, legal, and regulatoryobstacles to access. Despite the benefits of finance, the datashow that use of financial services is far from universal inmany countries, especially developing countries. Universal accessto financial services has not been a public policy objectivein most countries and would likely be difficult to achieve.Countries can, however, facilitate access to financial servicesby strengthening institutional infrastructure, liberalizingmarkets and facilitating greater competition, and encouraginginnovative use of know-how and technology. Government interventionsto directly broaden access to finance, however, are costly andfraught with risks, among others the risk of missing the targetedgroups. The article concludes with recommendations for globalactions aimed at improving data on access and use and suggestionson areas of further analysis to identify constraints to broadeningaccess.      

Return Behavior in Emerging Stock Markets

This article investigates the behavior of stock returns in thetwenty stock markets represented in the International FinanceCorporation's Emerging Markets Data Base. The aim is to testfor return anomalies and predictability. Using statistical methodologiesthat have identified seasonal and size-based return differences,as well as general return predictability in industrial markets,we find that these emerging markets display few of the sameanomalies. In particular, we find limited evidence of turn-of-the-tax-yeareffects and small-firm effects. We do find, however, evidenceof return predictability.     

Finance and inequality: Channels and evidence

We provide a framework to interpret the recent literature on financial development and inequality. In many developing countries, access to funding and financial services by firms and households is still very skewed. Recent evidence suggests that poor access does not only reflect economic constraints but also barriers erected by insiders. Inequality affects the distribution of political influence, so financial regulation often is easily captured by established interests in unequal countries. Captured reforms deepen rather than broaden access, as small elites obtain most of the benefits while risks are socialized. Financial liberalization motivated to increase access may in practice increase fragility and inequality, and lead to political backlash against reforms. Thus financial reforms may succeed only if matched by a buildup in oversight institutions. Journal of Comparative Economics 35 (4) (2007) 748–773.