THE DESIGN OF MUNICIPAL DEVELOPMENT FUNDS

Municipal Development Funds (MDFs) have become the preferred means of many donors and, increasingly, national governments for the finance of urban infrastructure. This article assesses their performance and design based on extensive data collection on ten MDFs and recommends changes. MDFs have two overall goals: credit and development. The greatest appeal of MDFs as credit providers is that they can wholesale funds for a wide variety of small urban infrastructure project to many local governments. However, they have largely failed to move toward market principles, and, too often, have succeeded in building infrastructure without strategically promoting local development. In this context, donors have focus sed on gearing MDFs to promoting local development - improving project appraisal, rationalizing the inter-governmental transfer system, establishing capital budgeting and fiscal planning, distributing funds among regions and municipal-size categories, and promoting community participation. But MDFs have also produced uneven results in achieving these goals. At bottom, MDFs have failed to connect with local demand. Local governments often have little idea what local people - particularly poor communities - want and need. Not surprisingly, they often fail to accept or repay charges for MDF projects. The best hope for improving MDFs lies in relating these funds closer to local people's preferences. Means to this end include: involving neighborhood associations and households in project selection; relying on project revenues rather than transfers as the main guarantee and source for loan repayment; using commercial financial institutions to underwrite, disburse, and collect loans; and hiring community development staff at the MDF.     

Tourism, peace, politics and ideology: impacts of the Mt. Gumgang tour project in the Korean Peninsula

A number of researchers have postulated that tourism between nations that have been divided or remain hostile to each other may be a means of reducing tension and promoting peace. The Korean Peninsula has remained divided since the Korean War and tensions between the North and South remain high. In the first tangible attempt to develop meaningful relations between the North and South outside of the UN structure, the Hyundai Corporation of South Korea was given permission to build and operate a resort destination at Mt. Gumgang in North Korea. The project has not been well supported by South Korean tourists and has required significant financial assistance from the South Korean Government. The paper examines the background of the project, the issues that were the primary cause for low demand and the role of the project as a vehicle for promoting peace. The paper finds that while tourism may be a method of reducing political tension as suggested by Butler and Mao (Asia Pacific J. Tourism Res. 1(1) (1996) 25) and Yu (Asia Pacific J. Tourism Res. 2(1) (1997) 19), it may also have a darker side and inadvertently become a vehicle for inhibiting peace. Further the paper suggests that in the case of Mt. Gumgang, tourism is the consequence of a political process aimed at rapprochement, not the genesis of the process.     

Competruism: Ideology with a sustainable future

Unless the advanced nations adopt a new socioeconomic order compatible with the technological milieu of the information age, they could face catastrophe in the years just ahead. Free societies should consider shifting from capitalism, with its perilous obsession with consumption, to the competruistic ideology which provides a sustainable future through its focus on conservation. This emerging ideology employs ‘productive efficiency’ as the criterion of success in its mission to maximize the value its free societies add to the global economy.     

Empirical Analysis of Business Growth Factors Using Swedish Data

Empirical research conducted on the U.S., German, Australian, and Scottish economies has shown that age, size, location, legal form, and industry are related to business growth. Much of this research has focused on manufacturing firms, thus providing little information about the effect of industrial sector differences on these factors. We seek to both confirm that small independent firms demonstrate the greatest growth rates and to explore the effects of the industrial sector on this conclusion.
This article uses Swedish data to replicate previous research while using a different definition of business to enhance the study of effects from industry, international versus domestic businesses, and domestic versus foreign ownership. Results show that business age, beginning size, ownership form, industrial sector, and legal form are the most important factors related to growth. Although business growth differs among industrial sectors, youth, ownership independence, and small size are major factors that underlie growth across all industries.     

Perceiving competitive reactions: The value of accuracy (and paranoia)

An assumption of much of the literature in marketing strategy is that a firm accurately knows the nature of its interaction with competitors. This study examines this assumption and explores the relationship between firm performance and accuracy in perception. Teams in the Markstrat2 simulation game reported their reactions to competitors, while simultaneously indicating their perceptions of whether competitors had reacted to their decisions in the past. Teams were in general inaccurate in identifying competitive reactions. Further, missing a competitive reaction (not perceiving a competitor's stated reaction) significantly reduced a team's performance. The data suggest that teams may benefit from being paranoid about their competitors; late in the game, the more competitive reactions a team perceived to its moves, the better the firm performed, regardless of accuracy.     

加拿大对发展管理的构思与实践--不列颠哥伦比亚省温哥华市的案例研究

文章旨在介绍加拿大城市开发的管理思路和模式,探求一些在不列颠哥伦比亚省政府规划控制指导下的土地使用与开发的管理方法;详细讨论了温哥华市的区域性规划,即温哥华市的可居住性区域战略规划.因其目的意在努力协调自然环境保护和城市迅速发展之间的关系,所以加拿大人把它看作是一个富于创新意识的规划.此外,这一规划理念将有益于中国的各城市,中国的规划师们去尝试解决相类似的问题,如城市化与自然环境保护的平衡问题.     

Book review

The views expressed herein are not purported to reflect those of the U.S. Department of Justice.     

An Examination of Option-Implied S&P 500 Futures Price Distributions

Expected S&P 500 futures price distributions are derived using no-arbitrage option pricing models. These distributions are parameterized both as the lognormal and as a less restrictive three-parameter Burr-XII distribution. The resulting option-based probability assessments display some evidence of miscalibration very near to expiration and far from expiration, but are accurate over intermediate time ranges. The means of the implied price distributions correspond closely to the contemporaneous futures prices for both distributions, although marginally better with the Burr-XII. The Burr-XII distribution also performs better than the lognormal based on calibration statistics, and hence, is used to recalibrate estimated distributions.     

Contents of Codes of Ethics of Professional Business Organizations in the United States

This paper reports an analysis of the content of the codes of ethics of 15 professional business organizations in the United States, representing the broad range of disciplines found in business. The analysis was conducted to identify common ethical issues faced by business professionals. It was also structured to highlight ethical issues that are either unique to or of particular importance for business professionals. No attempt is made to make value judgments about either the codes of ethics studied or of their content. General ethical values identified include honesty and integrity, general legal compliance, discreditable or harmful acts, and obligations related to social values. More business-specific issues include confidentiality, responsibilities to employers/clients, obligations to the profession, independence and objectivity, and business-specific legal and technical compliance issues.