Are South Africa's cities changing? Indications from the mid‐1990s

Books reviewed in this article: Scott A. Bollens, Urban peace‐building in divided societies: Belfast and Johannesburg Alan Morris, Bleakness and light: inner‐city transition in Hillbrow, Johannesburg Robert Cameron, Democratisation of South African local government: a tale of three cities Susan Parnell, Edgar Pieterse, Mark Swilling and Dominique Wooldridge (eds.), Democratising local government: the South African experiment Grant R. Saff, Changing Cape Town: urban dynamics, policy and planning during the political transition in South Africa     

Patent protection through discriminatory exclusion of imports

Section 337 of the U.S. Tariff Act empowers the ITC to order the exclusion of imported products found to infringe a U.S. intellectual property right. The EC and other countries have charged that section 337 and its procedures create discrimination, by offering stronger protection in the U.S. market against infringement by foreign products than by domestic. The EC's policy towards gray market imports has a similar discriminatory flavor. This paper analyzes the economic costs to the home country implicit in such discriminatory protection of intellectual property. Excluding infringing imports when their true costs are lower results in the domestic market being served by higher cost production. Moreover, tolerating infringement by domestic products dilutes the gains accruing to a patent holder when imports are excluded. The upshot is that for plausible assumptions about cost differences internationally and about the scope for domestic infringement, discriminatory exclusion of imports can be an expensive way to protect intellectual property. Other mechanisms can reward innovators in a more efficient manner.Associate Professor of Economics, Georgetown University, Washington DC 20057. For helpful discussions and comments I wish to thank John Barton, Jonathan Eaton, Maxim Engers, David Malueg, and Martin Richardson.     

Risks to the long-term stability of the euro

There are grounds for immediate and long-term concerns with respect to the prospects for the stability of the euro's purchasing power. The immediate concerns arise from the pressures on the ECB to be more accommodative and the drive to weaken the Stability and Growth Pact. The long-term concerns arise from the spending obligations the member governments have assumed to provide pensions and health care to their aging populations for the next half-century, and the imminent enlargement of the EU to include ten states that are less economically and institutionally advanced than the present group of member states. The outlook is for greater spending by governments than their projected resources unless forces not now visible will strengthen the resolve of political leaders to serve the cause of a sound euro.Presidential address at the International Atlantic Economic Conference, Quebec City, Canada on Saturday, October 18, 2003.     

Financial information for consumers: A future strategy for consumer organisations

The consumer is faced with increasingly complex decision-making in relation to financial services. His or her information needs are growing more sophisticated and comprehensive. At the same time, the supply of many financial services to consumers is becoming increasingly internationalised. It is suggested that national consumer organisations should work in collaboration to identify consumers' financial information needs, to develop a shared testing programme for internationally available financial services and to share experience in developing information and communications technology-based personal financial advice.

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Verbraucherinformation über Finanzdienstleistungen: Eine zukünftige Strategie für Verbraucherorganisationen

Zusammenfassung Verbraucherentscheidungen in finanziellen Fragen sind schwieriger, der Informationsbedarf der Konsumenten ist umfassender und komplexer geworden. Da gleichzeitig viele finanzielle Dienstleistungen in internationalem Rahmen angeboten werden, schlägt der Beitrag vor, daß die nationalen Verbraucherorganisationen in internationaler Kooperation den Informationsbedarf der Konsumenten zu finanziellen Fragen erfassen. Außerdem sollte ein Programm zur Prüfung und Bewertung von international angebotenen finanziellen Dienstleistungen entwickelt werden.

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Jeremy Mitchell was until the end of 1986 Director of the National Consumer Council (UK) and now works independently as Consumer Policy Adviser to voluntary and consumer organisations at 214 Evering Road, London E5 8AJ, UK. The paper was given to the Thirtieth Anniversary Seminar of Association des Consommateurs/Verbruikersunie at Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium, on 11 June 1987.     

Stakeholders as Citizens? Rethinking Rights, Participation, and Democracy

This paper reviews and analyses the implications of citizenship thinking for building ‘ethical’ institutional arrangements for business. The paper looks at various stakeholder groups whose relation with the company changes quite significantly when one starts to conceptualize it in terms of citizenship. Rather than being simply stakeholders, we could see those groups either as citizens, or as other constituencies participating in the administration of citizenship for others, or in societal governance more broadly. This raises crucial questions about accountability and democracy in stakeholder relations with the corporation. We sketch out the main currents informing and emerging from the citizenship perspective on firm-stakeholder relations; analyze specific stakeholder groups and their particular relevance in the context of a citizenship perspective; and conclude with a discussion of the broader implications in terms of building ethical institutions.     

The Dynamics of Agricultural Biotechnology Adoption: Lessons from series rBST Use in Wisconsin, 1994–2001

This article exploits panel data from Wisconsin dairy farmers to examine the dynamics of recombinant bovine somatotropin (rBST) adoption and to identify the characteristics that distinguish among nonadopters, disadopters, and early and late adopters. Panel methods are used to control for omitted variables and endogenous regressors that call into question coefficient estimates derived from cross-section adoption models. The results, however, confirm previous findings that larger farms with complementary feeding technologies are more likely to adopt rBST, nonadopters appear quite unlikely to become adopters, and rBST adoption will remain at rather moderate levels in Wisconsin.     

Electricity Prices and Power Derivatives: Evidence from the Nordic Power Exchange

This paper examines the importance of the regular pattern in the behavior of electricity prices, and its implications for the purposes of derivative pricing. We analyze the Nordic Power Exchange's spot, futures, and forward prices. We conclude that the seasonal systematic pattern throughout the year, in particular, is of crucial importance in explaining the shape of the futures/forward curve. Moreover, in the context of the oneand two factor models analyzed in this paper, a simple sinusoidal functionis adequate in order capture the seasonal pattern of the features and forwardcurve directly implied by the seasonal behavior of spot electricity prices.