Labour reform in a neo-liberal ‘protected’ democracy: Chile 1990–2001

This paper analyses the direction and degree of labour reform in Chile since the restoration of democracy in 1990 after seventeen years of military dictatorship. The regime of General Augusto Pinochet (1973–90) adopted a highly repressive political character and implemented neo-liberal economic policies, which, together with the institutional restructuring that accompanied them, transformed vast sectors of Chilean society. The 1979 Labour Plan significantly changed the character of industrial relations legislation and the roles and balance of power among social actors, transforming the way in which industrial relations had been conducted since the 1920s. We argue that, despite more than a decade since the restoration of democracy, and after several rounds of reform, the current legislation presents remarkable continuity with the one enacted under authoritarianism, contradicting claims that profound change has been achieved. In attempting to explain the direction and degree of the so-called Transition's Labour Reforms, we emphasize the importance of political-economy approaches. We explore the conservative nature of the Chilean transition to democracy, the continuity of the neo-liberal economic model and the increasing imbalance of power between capital and labour, in an effort to account for the persistence of the authoritarian legacy in today's Chilean industrial relations.     

Technifying Public Space and Publicizing Infrastructures: Exploring New Urban Political Ecologies through the Square of General Vara del Rey

The aim of this article is to explore new ways of integrating technology, nature and infrastructures into urban public spaces. This is done through a case study, the design of General Vara del Rey, which is offered here as a model to explore a novel urban political ecology that calls into question dominant definitions of public spaces as self‐contained sites operating independently of natural and infrastructural spaces. Through the double movement of ‘the technification of public space’ and ‘the publicization of infrastructures’, the square aims to rethink the political ecology of urban public spaces by enabling the effective incorporation and participation of infrastructural and natural elements as active actors into the public and political life of the community. It is argued that the transformation of infrastructures into fully visible, public and political agents provides a useful model to address the growing proliferation of infrastructural and technological elements onto contemporary urban surfaces and to open up the possibility of new forms of civic participation and engagement.     

Effects of Diversity on Group Decision-Making Processes: The Moderating Role of Human Resource Management

Past empirical studies have demonstrated that differences among group members may have both positive and negative effects on decision-making processes. As direct models have failed to explain such intricate consequences, recent work has begun to propose models that are more complex by including mediating and moderating variables. In general, the literature has assumed that the extent to which differences between members benefit group decisions depends on certain conditions in the unit, especially its management. Drawing on a literature review, we find that the human resource management system can be one of these moderators. Using the estimates of a structural model, we discuss how certain choices in the definition of human resource policies can help the organization to improve decision-making processes in diverse groups.     

Analyzing long-term average adjustment of financial ratios with spatial interactions

The aim of this paper is to put forward a beta convergence model using spatial interaction to evaluate the dynamics of financial ratios. We overcome some of the limitations that come from the traditional partial adjustment model by relating both models. We show that the parameters of the two models may be connected. As an example, we discuss the case of a large sample of medium to high-tech industrial small and medium enterprises (SMEs) located along the Spanish Mediterranean coast. Our findings support the existence of a long-term average adjustment process in the financial ratios of this set of companies which depends on the characteristics of the firms in their neighborhood.     

STRUCTURAL INTERDEPENDENCE AMONG COLOMBIAN DEPARTMENTS

This paper analyzes structural interdependence among Colombian departments. The results show that Bogotá has a large influence on the other regional economies through the power of its purchases. Additionally, a center–periphery pattern emerges in the spatial concentration of the effects of the hypothetical extraction of any territory. From a policy point of view, the main findings reaffirm the role played by Bogotá in the recent polarization process observed in the regional economies in Colombia. Any policy action oriented to reduce these regional disparities should take into account that, given the structural interdependence among Colombian departments, the effects of new investment in the lagged regions would flow through Bogotá and the major regional economies.     

Indirect taxation and the welfare effects of altruism on the optimal fiscal policy

This paper analyzes the welfare effects of altruism on the optimal fiscal policy. The existence of positive bequests links present and future generations in the economy. We show that these altruistic links provide a new role for indirect taxation (consumption and estate taxes) with important welfare implications. We use three different altruistic approaches (warm-glow, dynastic, and family) to illustrate how the presence of bequests in the budget constraint of the donee gives the government the ability to use indirect taxation to mimic lump-sum taxes and to implement the first-best outcome in the long-run. This channel is not present in economies without altruism, such as the infinite-lived consumer economy or the overlapping generations economy, where long-run welfare is suboptimal and indirect taxation is irrelevant.     

Equity‐Liabilities Distinction: The case for Co‐operatives*

Members' shares in co‐operative entities are financial instruments with particular characteristics. In this paper we analyse the relation between firm leverage and systematic risk to provide empirical evidence on the economic substance of the member shares of members of cooperatives. We have studied the characteristics of members' shares in six European countries: France, Germany, Italy, Portugal, Spain and United Kingdom. We have also conducted tests on co‐operatives of these countries over the period 1993–2005. The study reports that in global terms the economic substance of the redeemable part of equity in co‐operatives is not the same across countries. Therefore if accounting standards setters want to develop a global standard for co‐operatives, a recommendation derived from this study would be to follow a probabilistic model to classify the redeemable part of co‐operative financial instruments, where the entity does not have the unconditional right to refuse the redemption, or to report this part as an intermediate item with characteristics of debt and equity.     

Well-connected short-sellers pay lower loan fees: A market-wide analysis

High loan fees generate short-selling constraints and, therefore, reduce price efficiency. Despite the importance of loan fees, empirical evidence on their determinants is scarce. Using a market-wide deal-by-deal data set on the Brazilian equity lending market which uniquely identifies borrowers, brokers, and lenders, we are able to construct a proxy of search costs at the borrower–stock–day level. We find that—for the same stock, on the same day—borrowers with higher search costs pay significantly higher loan fees. Our results suggest that regulators should encourage the use of a centralized lending platform to reduce search costs in the lending market.     

Assessing the broadband gap: From the penetration divide to the quality divide

Only some years ago the analysis of broadband diffusion was focused on who had an Internet connection and who did not. Now, the relevant questions are: how good is it? How fast? And, how fast is fast? Thus, the broadband gap can no longer be seen as a penetration divide. It is becoming more and more a quality and capacity divide, and therefore, a divide in the range of services people can access and use. By means of the Broadband Quality Score—an index that combines three key performance parameters for the quality of a connection (upload and download speeds, and latency)—Japan is found to be the only country of the 42 countries studied currently prepared to deliver the quality required for next-generation web applications over the next 3 to 5 years.     

Outsourcing decision-making aspects considered by IT departments in Brazilian companies

The study of Information Technology (IT) outsourcing is relevant because companies are outsourcing their activities more than ever. An important IT outsourcing research area is the decision-making process. In other words, the comprehension of how companies decide about outsourcing their IT operations is relevant from research point of view. Therefore, the objective of this study is to understand the decision-making process used by Brazilian companies when outsourcing their IT operations. An analysis of the literature that refers to this subject showed that six aspects are usually considered by companies on the evaluation of IT outsourcing service alternatives. This research verified how these six aspects are considered by Brazilian companies on IT outsourcing decisions. The survey showed that Brazilian companies consider all the six aspects, but each of them has a different level of importance. The research also grouped the aspects according to their level of importance and interdependency, using factorial analysis to understand the logic behind IT outsourcing decision process.